


Summer Days' Nightmares

by Signel_chan



Series: Snowed In-verse [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Babies and children, Everyone Has Issues, F/M, Family, Fun at the Horse Camp, Gun Fighting, Police Conference Shenanigans, Romance, Will They or Won't They? Who Knows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-06 17:56:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 100,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8763127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Signel_chan/pseuds/Signel_chan
Summary: Three and a half years is a long time to move past something, and while some people can claim without the slightest hint of regret that they have definitely moved on, others aren't as quick to forgive the completely wrong way everything fell apart. At least, that might be what they're telling everyone around them; whether or not that's the real truth is up for debate. And what better way to solve that problem than for fate's hand to force someone who feels a certain someone else stole something important from them together for an early summer week in a foreign country--while at the same time, a perfectly-manicured hand forces the "stolen" object right into a situation that not a single damn person involved thought through beforehand.A cabin in the Feroxi mountains and a police conference in Plegia are the dueling scenes for one wild week that no one (but everyone at the same time) could have asked for.





	1. Welcome to Plegia

**Author's Note:**

> AAAAAAAAA IT'S FINALLY TIME. OPERATION "SDN" BEGINS.
> 
> Basically here's not even the first day's worth of words from my NaNo project this year, posting as the first chapter of my sequel from my NaNo fic last year. Yes my plan is to post the entire thing this month. It's going to be one wild ride.

The airplane being as empty as it was would have been a blessing had the few people who were on it not been strategically seated together. Somewhere towards the back of the plane were the few civilians who were taking the completely-unusual scenic flight from Ferox’s capital to Plegia, all kept together as to not impede conversations happening towards the front. Up right behind the first-class section, taking up four seats on one side of the aisle and two on the other, the six police officers on the flight were seated, an arrangement made as to keep them together and keep any friendly interactions from being stopped by restroom-bound passengers aside from those in their own ranks.

Lamenting the fact that he’d not been given a window seat, as well as the fact that the company he’d been saddled with weren’t exactly the kinds of people he’d want to be stuck on an airplane for several hours, Vaike sighed, looking across the aisle to the two Feroxi officers on the other side and watching them bickering between themselves. Had he had a relationship with any of the officers on his side of the plane that would allow for that kind of interaction, he’d gladly have been poking fun at someone. Instead, as he tried to block out the people he was sitting near, he was left thinking about the unfortunate chain of circumstances that had led to him being the third member of the Ylissean police force bound for a major conference.

Weeks beforehand, when the request for officers to attend the conference had made its way to Chrom’s desk, he had two specific joiners in mind for taking the trip with him. “I don’t mean to exclude anyone with this, but it’s only fair that my right-hand man and my most trusted investigator get to make this trip with me,” he explained at the next all-force meeting, “and I would be honored if they could take the week to come along.”

Had one of them not declined the request, citing feeling like missing a week of his children’s summer vacation was a disservice to them, then Vaike wouldn’t have had anything to do with the conference and he could have spent the time that Chrom was there doing something more important, like trying his hand at leading the force for a few days. But Robin had no intentions of going to Plegia, and his story of how he didn’t want to leave his daughters alone with their mother for the week was flimsy at best; Chrom didn’t argue with it, for whatever reason, and when that denial had been made he’d immediately turned to Vaike to fill the position. “I know that we, ahem, haven’t been as close as we used to be, but you’re one of my most skilled officers and I trust that you’d accept the spot that Robin’s left vacant at the conference…?”

“I, er, guess I can do that. Sucks that the Vaike’s your backup man and wasn’t one ‘a your original picks, but whatever works.” He hadn’t wanted to accept it, not when Chrom had mentioned something that was nothing short of a sore subject even three and a half years later—time might heal all wounds but the heartbreak Vaike had experienced at the hands of Chrom’s sister hadn’t faded by any means. “Just as long as, y’know, she ain’t gonna be there.”

“There would be no reason for my sister to be around, so don’t worry. The only sign of her you’ll see the entire time we’re in Plegia will be me, I promise.” But Chrom hadn’t known at the time who the Feroxi force was sending along with their high-ranking officials, and so he hadn’t known that he was directly going against his own words. The only reason that Vaike was even aware of that was due to the person seated right next to him, who was currently scrolling through pictures on his phone, unaware of the fact that Vaike had turned to stare in his direction, trying to look out the window but constantly glancing at the man sitting there.

He held no ill will towards Frederick, and he never could bring himself to do that, but something about how he’d been so eager to point out that the man sitting next to Chrom in the row in front of theirs was none other than the man who’d stolen Vaike’s woman from underneath him. “You are aware that Lon’qu has _married_ Lissa, aren’t you?” Frederick had asked Vaike as they were boarding the plane, not even knowing that their assigned seats were going to be right behind the man in question.

“Hadn’t bothered askin’ ‘bout what she’d done since she left me, but that’s nice t’know,” he replied, gritting his teeth as he did. “Glad t’see she could run off with some other guy and marry him right away, but that’s her deal, not mine.” Talking about her was always going to put him in a bad mood, as was hearing anything about her, so finding out that she was not only married, but that she was married to a guy on their very same plane was a blow he hadn’t wanted to ever take. Hadn’t it been such a long time that they’d been together, just for her to walk out before he had a chance to propose to her? Why would she have gone off and married the next guy she got with? It just didn’t make sense to him, and even with such a long flight to dwell on that information, he was sure it wasn’t going to make sense.

With his eyes trying to focus on the passing clouds outside the plane window, Vaike was displeased when Frederick pulled down the plastic shade, the incoming light casting a glare on his phone that he hadn’t liked. Now that he had no reason to be looking in that direction, he went back to looking across at the other Feroxi officers, a man and a woman both holding command on the same level as Chrom’s. He wasn’t sure how the police force worked in Ferox, but if it was anything like in Ylisse then it would have made sense for them to not share power, and if they did, why had they only brought one lower-ranking officer along with them for the conference?

“Vaike, you’re ignoring my question,” Chrom said, causing Vaike to shake his head and try rooting his mind in reality rather than his thoughts. Chrom had turned around in his seat, peering back at the blond man behind him with a smile. “I was trying to ask you about your ride up to the airport in Ferox. It wasn’t too bad, was it?”

“Could’ve been worse,” he replied, pursing his lips in displeasure as he thought about the alternative to the ride he had been given, that being coming up days before with Chrom for a reason he hadn’t actually pieced together until he learned about who this other guy was married to. “I mean, goin’ anywhere with Maribelle ain’t fun, but she had t’drive her husband up anyway so me comin’ along worked out.”

“I heard Maribelle’s name, and whatever it is, she most certainly did not mean any harm by doing it.” Taking the precautions to apologize on his wife’s behalf for anything she might have done, once Frederick was caught up to the question that had been posed, he took back what he’d said. “No, the ride wasn’t bad at all. With any guests in the car, we manage to run a tight and nearly-silent ship.”

Rolling his eyes, Vaike muttered, “Yeah, tight’s a word I’d use t’describe it. Do ya know how uncomfortable it was bein’ crammed in that back seat? Those damn—“ He was silenced by Frederick’s hand coming across the empty seat between them and covering his mouth, muffling any and all following words for a few seconds until he felt it was suitable to pull back away. “—what was that for? Do ya not like hearin’ the Vaike say anythin’ negative ‘bout your family or somethin’?”

“That would be correct, it’s hard enough having to be away from them for this conference that I will not tolerate anything bad being said about them. Why, I have honestly asked myself a time or two if coming was really worth it.” Frederick brought his hand back onto his phone, opening up to his lock screen that was a picture of his dearest Maribelle, only to lock it once more. “I have nothing but the utmost faith that she’ll keep everything in check while I’m gone. Especially since she’s going to have Lissa with her. Those two could get in trouble, I know, but they have always been good influences on…” He looked to Vaike and how he was growing frustrated with every word, so he quickly wrapped up. “…each other.”

Rather than pick an argument with the point, Vaike took the higher road and simply replied with, “Don’t I know it. Your wife has done nothin’ but good, ever, for that woman.” And with that he was turning back away to ignore the two men he’d been talking to, not wanting to listen any further to what they had to say. He was not going to listen to anyone tell him that Maribelle and Lissa together was a good combination, as he knew it was directly Maribelle’s fault that Lissa had left him in the first place, but that wasn’t anything he could hold against the woman who actually tried talking to him on occasion. She might have told his then-girlfriend to leave him, but she had a reason, no matter how wrong it was, and he had long since forgiven her for it.

Thinking about those two and what had happened that Christmas three years before was enough to get his mind to start wandering to related things, more specifically the person that, as far as Maribelle had known at that time, he was cheating on Lissa with. Time had not been kind to any sort of relationship between himself and that fiery-haired, horse-loving woman, but he at least kept in close contact with Sully, even if they rarely worked together anymore and she had taken summer residence up at the very horse camp that had done his previous relationship in. She had made it very clear that she wasn’t looking to make staying up there a permanent thing, but if she liked it then she might just stay after all and that would be the end of them ever seeing each other.

Why did it matter if he saw her, though? He knew she wasn’t interested in trying to help him mend his still-broken heart, something he’d known from the moment he knew things were over between him and Lissa. Even if she was, at the point they were at now, he would most likely choose to go for someone who was unaffiliated with the police station. Dating Chrom’s sister had been a bad idea even if they’d been together for years and years, if only because the fallout had ruined not just his relationship with her (obviously) but it had strained his relationship with Chrom as well. Going through that a second time, by dating another officer and then having something inevitably go wrong, would potentially be a death knell to his job that he needed to avoid.

He’d gotten lucky that he’d done nothing wrong in the situation with Lissa, because had he been the one messing up he was sure he’d have already been fired for that. He couldn’t risk doing anything to damage his position further. “Are you trying to ignore all of us still, or are you going to communicate like a polite person?” Chrom asked, getting a glare in response. “O- _kay_ , looks like it’s the first one. Listen, if you had a problem with being part of this, you could have said something and I would have found someone else. There’s a list of people who would love to be in your shoes right now.”

“My shoes, huh?” Vaike looked down at his feet and, completely missing the point of what Chrom had just said, slid his shoes off and kicked them underneath the seat in front of him. “Now if they wanna be in ‘em, they can go right on ahead.”

“That’s not what I meant, but okay.” He turned back for a second, before standing up and walking the one row behind him to stand beside Vaike, using his height and ability to block any exit to his advantage. “Lon’qu just happens to be asleep right now, figured you’d want to talk while I wasn’t working on entertaining him. Was I wrong to assume that?”

“You were wrong when ya assumed I’d wanna be on the same plane as that guy.” Looking for a way to get out of interacting with Chrom, Vaike looked to the man in the window seat on his row of chairs and grinned. “Say, Frederick, y’wanna talk t’me real quick? Teach ol’ Chrom here a lesson?”

Frederick shook his head, his eyes locking with Chrom’s as the blue-haired man made the exact same head motions. “I want to play no part in your ignoring our chief, no matter how much you don’t want to talk to him. Leave me out of this.”

“Figures you’re on his side and not mine.” Sighing dramatically, Vaike rolled his entire head to look at Chrom through the corners of his eyes. “What do ya want from me, and how much talkin’ to ya does Teach here have t’do t’get you off my back?”

“I just want to talk to you, seeing as we’ll be rooming together for the duration of the conference and we need to be on good terms. You were fine when I saw you last at the station, what changed between now and then?” There were several answers that Vaike could have given, the most obvious being the presence of Lon’qu and the news that he was married to Lissa, but instead of saying anything he merely shrugged. “I figured you wouldn’t give me an answer. Look, I didn’t know Lon’qu was coming until I saw him the other day. I was told it was just going to be the co-chiefs Basilio and Flavia,” he motioned to the two dark-skinned people still bickering in the seats across the aisle, “but then I guess one of them decided they wanted their right-hand officer with them, just like I decided I wanted two of mine.”

“Of all the guys, though, it had t’be your brother-in-law?” Vaike spat those words as if they pained him to say, which they honestly did; for the longest time he’d figured that he’d get to be the one earning that title someday, but now knowing who had won it in the end was making it worse. “Couldn’t they have picked, I dunno, someone not in your family?”

“H-how did you find out that they got married?” Cue Frederick giving a small wave, admitting his guilt in that revelation, and Chrom sighed at the news. “That wasn’t anything I wanted you knowing, I’m aware how much Lissa still means to you, and I didn’t want you hating Lon’qu because of that.”

“Too late, that guy ain’t gettin' any good thoughts from the Vaike for as long as I live.” Vaike’s eyes shifted towards the row of seats in front of him, a head of black hair visible over the headrest of that row’s window seat. “Just look at ‘im, unaware that I’m back here hatin’ him for everythin’ he’s got.”

Chrom winced at the declaration, correcting Vaike with, “No, he knows that you’d end up being the one hating him if anyone ever did. He was well-aware of who you were from the moment you stepped onto this plane, without any of my input. He _is_ married to someone who you once meant the world to, after all.”

“Oh I know that he is, stealin’ my place in her heart and all that.” He closed his eyes and leaned forward, letting his head rest against the seat in front of him. “Just…leave me alone for a minute or two, Chrom. I ain’t in the mood t’be dealin’ with this.” Chrom typically wasn’t one to let his officers be upset like Vaike currently was, but he respected that he needed to give a little bit of space for the moment, so he took his seat once more and let the blond sit there, head propped up by the chair in front of him. He might have dozed off for a little bit, although if he had then his thoughts were nothing but vibrant and vivid, images of times gone by crossing his mind and doing nothing to calm his bad mood.

When he sat back up straight, the atmosphere on the plane had changed, the sun outside beginning to set way out on the horizon and sending a much softer light into the cabin. “I see you’re back awake,” Frederick said, a smile on his typically-stern face. “Please tell me that you’re in a much more pleasant mood now after your nap. You were a lot testier than normal beforehand, something I don’t think I can credit to the ride we had into Ferox.”

“You’re right, it’s nothing to do with the ride we had. Beautiful ride, what a shame it was t’get me on this plane I’ve got no business bein’ on.” Grumbling, Vaike added, “Would’ve been nicer if it was like the last time I went t’Ferox. At least then I was around someone who actually enjoyed my existence.”

“Are you saying I don’t enjoy you?” Sounding offended, Frederick turned to his phone and shuffled through some of the pictures on it, ending up turning it to show Vaike the one currently on the screen, which was one of the two of them at some work event. “If I didn’t, do you think I would still keep this handy, years later? Do you even remember that night? Despite Chrom’s best intentions someone still brought some drinks into the party and you, as I’m sure you know, decided to challenge several others to drinking contests, all of which you won with ease.”

“Doesn’t ring any bells no.” As he looked closer at the picture, trying to place the spoken events to the image to no avail, Vaike couldn’t help but overhear part of the conversation taking place in the row ahead of them. He tried his best to focus on the picture and not on whatever it was Chrom was saying to the man sitting next to him, but there was no paying attention to an image he was clearly drunk in when he heard Chrom mention something about his sister. “Er, why don’tcha keep tellin’ me ‘bout that night, in case it just takes a bit ‘a remindin’ to get the Vaike to remember it?”

Always quick to help a friend, Frederick started on the best recounting of that particular station party he could manage, while Vaike turned his attention entirely to what was going on in front of him. “So, correct me if I’m understanding this wrong, but you _volunteered_ to come along with your commander for the conference? Even though, you know, you would be much more useful at home?”

“That is correct.” The voice belonging to that other man made Vaike angry just to hear it, and little did he know but he was only going to get angrier with every word that Lon’qu said following that. “I assumed that Lissa would much enjoy Maribelle’s companionship, and spending time with two ladies, even given the circumstances, would not bode well for me. If it were Olivia or someone else I am close with, perhaps I would have chosen to stay home, but this way it works out for all of us the way it should.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think you’re quite understanding how bad of an idea that might be. I know my sister, I know she doesn’t take too well to being left behind.” If Vaike could have seen Chrom’s face as he spoke, he would have seen the way he was looking wistful, as if he was trying to recount a story from winters past without getting into the details. “But I also know you’ve got that weird thing with women, and as far as I know, you and Maribelle have never gotten along, so maybe you are right and you coming along with Basilio was best.”

“I am fully aware that what I’ve done is best. Lissa knows how to handle things without me, and with her best friend by her side she’ll manage perfectly fine.” There was some shuffling in that row of seats, as Lon’qu repositioned himself while Chrom slid over into the once-empty seat that rest between them. “Er, Chrom, what is the reason for you coming closer?”

“You’re going to have to get used to this, being married to my sister and whatnot. Start talking, I need to know all that I can about how you treat her and how you’ve handled the, for lack of a better term, circumstances you two have surrounding you.” It was clear that Chrom was dancing around some point that he didn’t want Vaike hearing, as if he knew that he was being listened to. “Now get to talking, we shouldn’t have too much longer on this flight and I don’t know when we’ll get another chance to speak like this.”

“Spying on Chrom’s talk with Lon’qu, are you now?” His voice not much louder than a whisper, it was hard to hear that Frederick had said anything over the constant roar the airplane had going for it, but when coupled with how he was trying to shove his phone’s screen, still on that holiday party picture, into Vaike’s face, it was even harder to ignore him. When he got a curt nod in response, he thought for a second before giving the best diversion he could manage: “Don’t bother with listening in, whatever’s being said is probably uninteresting or only going to sour your mood further. We can’t be getting into Plegia with one of us in a bad mood.”

Vaike, gripping the side of his seat to keep from lunging forward to try and listen in anyway, pointed a finger at Frederick and gave it a shake. “You’re right, can’t be lettin’ whatever it is they’re discussin’ get t’me. What happened happened and I’ve just gotta move on. What kinda guy wastes three and a half years ‘a his time lustin’ over some girl who left him for no reason at all? Not this guy, that’s for sure!” His awkward laugh, combined with the fact that the person he was talking to knew all-too-well that he was lying through his teeth, was not reassuring even slightly, but it had to be accepted. “C’mon, let’s just get through the rest ‘a this flight without me gettin’ involved in their nonsense. Got any more pictures the Vaike was probably drinkin’ in?”

“I’m sure I have a handful of them, knowing the frequency of alcohol being smuggled into parties at the station.” Bringing his phone back to him so he could find a suitable image, Frederick actually froze when searching for a second, breaking from his normally stern and professional personality to let a string of curses out under his breath, before acting like nothing weird had happened. When Vaike questioned him about it, he merely explained, “It seems that when I last went through my pictures, I neglected to delete a few that Maribelle must have accidentally saved while using my phone. Images you don’t need to see, at that.”

“Well either they’re nude-y pics, or they’re involvin’ a certain woman I ain’t askin’ to see, so thanks for clearin’ those outta the way.” Already flushing at the idea that he’d have anything of an adult nature on his phone, Frederick chuckled at the second suggestion, which was basically confirming it to Vaike as the correct answer. “I’d definitely rather see a couple choice shots ‘a your wife before seein’ that woman’s face again, after what she did.”

“Could you please refrain from speaking about Maribelle like that? She would never, and I do mean never, take any pictures of that sort of herself.” His face still alight with color, he continued removing images until he felt he’d caught all of the offensive ones, handing his phone across the empty seat between them so that Vaike could hold it and look at his leisure. “There, I’ve taken care to make sure the work folder on there is entirely work-related pictures, there should be a few fitting the bill of what you’d requested.”

He thanked his friend as he took the phone into his own hand, a sick curiosity taking over him as he flipped through the pictures and saw that he hadn’t been lied to about there being drunk pictures of himself on there. But what had pictures of Lissa been doing in a folder dedicated to pictures at the station, when she hadn’t been there in years? He must not have been lying when he said Maribelle had just saved images wherever she had felt necessary, because the oldest picture in the collection was from the holiday party two years before and Lissa most definitely had not been around then. “Say, why d’ya keep all these on your phone? Don’t ya have somethin’ safer t’keep ‘em on?”

“It’s complicated, but I have backups upon backups of everything on that phone. While I would never let any child get their hands on it, and therefore it shouldn’t ever be in danger, you can never be too safe, and after having to replace my computer at home twice this year already…everything on my phone that stays with me at almost all times is best.” Reaching back for the phone because he thought Vaike was done looking through it, Frederick pulled his hand away when he got waved off. “You best not break that, I’ve done the best job I can keeping it in pristine condition, even with a constant fear that a child will grab hold of it and do whatever he wishes.”

“Must be a hard job, bein’ a dad and all that.” Although he knew he shouldn’t, Vaike was beginning to back out of the specific folder he’d been given to search for other pictures on the phone, his curiosity getting the better of him. “Not like I’d know what it’s like t’have a kid or anythin’, y’know, since my last girlfriend wanted none ‘a that and then left me.”

A panic flared in Frederick’s eyes and he started grabbing for his phone, Vaike leaning further away to keep it in his possession. “I think you’ve had enough time with that,” he said, fearing that he knew what his fellow officer was doing. “Just because I cleared out all pictures of her from that one folder doesn’t mean there aren’t others on there still. For the sake of your stress level, please give that back!” He was beginning to lean into that empty seat, making it harder for Vaike to keep the phone away from him, especially when the voice came over the plane’s intercom informing them that they were about to start descending into the Plegian capital city, and that everyone needed to return to their seats and be securely fastened in with their seatbelts.

Who would have figured that the impending landing would put an end to the game of keep-away, a game that ruined any and all chances of Vaike getting to see what else might have been on that phone. He had to sit there, not knowing what was being hidden from him, while the plane came down fast onto the desert runway at the Plegian airport, his life flashing before his eyes as they landed because of how hard their impact was. Once they were at the gate he, and all the other officers, got off the plane and grabbed their luggage, heading from the airport to the hotel they’d be calling home for almost the next week.

Somewhere along the way, they’d gotten separated from the Feroxi delegation and it was just the three Ylissean men on the trip, none of them talking to one another for various reasons. Chrom was too deep in thought, something Lon’qu had said to him keeping his mind occupied; Frederick was too busy trying to get a call through to Maribelle to let her know they’d made it safely, but his service wasn’t working; and Vaike was too relieved to not be anywhere near Lon’qu anymore to voice anything aside from comments stating his pleasure with that separation. Upon arriving to the hotel and checking in, the only thing that any of them said to one another, aside from staking their claim on the beds in their room, was a quick statement from Chrom to the other two about what they needed to do. “Other officers should be staying here too, perhaps after we get settled in we can go down to the lobby and attempt to make friends with them.”

He was promptly ignored by his companions, which didn’t stop him from going out to the lobby on his own. As he left, Vaike was sitting on the bed he’d claimed, the one closest to the window so that he could look outside at the desert wasteland they were currently in. In the background, he could hear Frederick still trying to get a call to go through on his phone, his occasional exclamations in frustration the only real disruptions from him thinking about what had happened on the plane. All he really knew was that he now knew who to blame for his last girlfriend leaving him, and that everyone he considered a close friend must have known about that whole relationship.

Or, at least, the good majority of close friends would have known. He knew some of his officer friends would have heard about it through the typical work gossip chain, and they wouldn’t have told him because there was no reason to, but there was one person he had enough faith in to believe that had she been told, she would have come straight to tell him. In that very moment, sitting on the bed in Plegia knowing that he was stuck with other officers for work reasons, his mind went back to the last time he’d been trapped somewhere with someone he worked with—and in that moment he realized just how much he’d have preferred being stuck in a snowy cabin to what he was going to have to do.

At least that time in the cabin had been only him and someone he could stand to be around, even if that tolerance had been ignored the entire time they’d be together because he was so busy thinking about who he’d been accidentally separated from. What would have happened had he not been so wrapped up on getting to go home to see his girlfriend, he wondered, because his entire stay up at that cabin had been focused on staying loyal to someone who had quickly moved on from him under the idea that he wasn’t being loyal at all. And to think, the person he had been with up there had wanted, and still wanted, nothing more from him than a friendship. But even still, being stuck _anywhere_ with Sully would be better than being at a convention for officers with the older brother of his last girlfriend and said brother’s best friend, who happened to be married to said last girlfriend’s best friend.

Not to mention, of course, the fact that said girlfriend’s husband was there with them too. Vaike must have groaned loudly or something as he was thinking about that deep web of connections that he wanted no part of, because Frederick came into his room from the other connected bedroom, his phone still against his ear but saying nothing into it. “Is everything okay in here? You sound rather frustrated about something, and as long as I can’t get through to Maribelle I suppose I could talk things out with you.”

“Can’t get through t’her? Your end or hers?” Thanks to what he’d been thinking about, he was stuck in the mindset of a lover ignoring all phone calls from the person trying to make contact with her, his eyebrows furrowing at the memories. When Frederick didn’t tell him anything, merely giving a one-shoulder shrug at the question, he gave a dramatic exhale and fell backwards onto his bed. “Then I doubt ya wanna be talkin’ t’me about anything, in case she picks up and overhears what I’ve got t’say.”

“I’m assuming what’s weighing on your mind has to do with Lissa then, doesn’t it?” Taking a seat right next to where Vaike was laying, Frederick set his phone on his lap and ended all traces of the calls he’d been trying to make.

“A guy goes years without tryin’ t’think about her, just for everything to start bringin’ her back into everything all at once. But why bother talkin’ about this with me, y’need to get through t’your lady before something bad happens on her end.” It wasn’t that Vaike didn’t want to talk about what was bothering him, but rather that he didn’t want to stop someone from checking in on who mattered to them just to try and make him feel better. “I’ll deal with this on my own, ain’t nothin’ that ol’ Vaike can’t handle.”

“No, if Maribelle had any intentions of answering my call she would have already. I’ll just assume her and Lissa have gotten into Ylisstol and have chosen to do something with their night that involves having a phone shut off.” Giving a small smile over at Vaike, Frederick stretched his arms out, letting both of his shoulders tense and relax for a moment before he stood up, walking to the window and looking out at its desert view. “What a desolate town we’ve found ourselves in. How people could stand to live here, I don’t think I’ll ever understand. We’re lucky to be from where we are.”

Sitting back up so that he could resume looking out of the window, Vaike took in a deep breath and sighed. “I guess ya could say we’re lucky, yeah. Anywhere’s better than this place.” He’d never set foot in Plegia before that day, and his only impressions of it were the views they’d seen on their way to the hotel and what he was looking at through the window, but due to all that had happened already to toy with his emotions, he was sure this place was simply the worst. “And anywhere’d be better than havin’ t’go downstairs and see Chrom and that Lon’qu guy talkin’ and bein’ brothers and all that.”

“I can understand why you wouldn’t want to be present for that, but I believe that Chrom has the courtesy to not do that sort of thing in front of you. He does know how much that loss still eats at you, after all.” Giving one last look out the window, Frederick turned to face Vaike again, still smiling but with more sadness involved than anything else. “How about this, we clean up and head down there now, as to not raise suspicion that anything is amiss.”

“Sounds like you’re tryin’ to get your own mind off’a somethin’ that’s buggin’ ya, but a plan’s a plan and there ain’t anything wrong with it.” Vaike stood up, straightening the collar of his shirt that had gotten ruffled while he’d been laying down. “Consider me cleaned up and ready t’get down there and interactin’ with new faces, hopefully.”

Having watched the simple display of straightening the collar, Frederick held his tongue upon any other corrections Vaike needed to make about his appearance (most notably about how his shirt had come untucked at some point and his hair was a downright disaster). “I’m sure you’ll make a good first impression on anyone we might meet today. They’ll consider you charming, just like the rest of us do, and who knows, maybe you’ll meet your one true soulmate while we’re here.”

“No thanks, don’t wanna be gettin' involved in that whole love and romance thing with anyone on the first day. Or the second day. Or however many days it is we’re gonna be here.” Vaike was already heading for the door, making sure to grab one of the key cards for re-entry in case he decided to come back to the room by himself. Following his lead, Frederick did the exact same, and once the two were in the hallway with the door latched tightly behind them, the plan had been, as stated, to go downstairs and start socializing.

But a loud cackle from down the hall sent shivers down Frederick’s spine, prompting him to grab Vaike’s arm and start pulling him towards the nearest staircase. “Gods, of all the people we could have encountered here, I think there’s someone I would rather never have to lock eyes with again,” he explained, opening the door to the stairs bound for the lobby and ducking inside the stairwell, Vaike pulling his arm away and looking at him like he was crazy for how panicked a simple laugh had made him. “It’s a story I’m quite surprised you haven’t heard before.”

“You’re talkin’ ‘bout not wantin’ to meet people here, and the Vaike ain’t exactly the guy you should be tellin’ that to. Don’tcha think there’s someone here _I_ don’t wanna have to lock eyes with?” Before he could get an answer, the laughter grew louder back up in the hallway, Frederick quickly starting descending the stairs without another word. “Ugh, whatever, you’re gonna let this all be a mystery t’me, aren’t ya?”

“I’ll explain it once I know he’s nowhere to be found, now come on!” Already halfway down the stairs, Frederick waited for Vaike to come join him before continuing down the rest of the staircase, the door at the bottom marked as an entrance into the hotel’s lobby. Audible on the other side of the door was the roar of multiple conversations happening at once, and with that as the backdrop Frederick decided then to give the explanation he’d skimped out on before. “That winter when you were trapped at the cabin, we played host to a couple of Plegian officers who were trying to find their way out of their current positions. Never in my wildest dreams did I assume that one of them would be here at this convention, but that laugh is unmistakable.”

“Are you still in here?” a voice tinged with laughter called out from the floor above, someone else having come into the stairwell. “Come on, if it’s really who I think it is I just want to ask about something!”

“He sounds friendly,” Vaike said, looking at Frederick as his brown-haired companion was going wide-eyed and backing towards the door to the lobby. “Give ‘im the time ‘a day and let ‘im ask his question. It can’t be that bad.”

“You don’t understand what kind of man he is, nor do you understand what happened when he was stuck at the station with us that evening…” Footsteps were coming down the stairs, the laughter coming along with them, and with every step made Frederick inched closer to the door behind him, readying himself to make a run for it. But when he tried opening the door, he found it to be unable to be opened, someone pushing up against it on the other side to keep them in place. “No, please, move so I can get out,” he muttered to himself, peering through the small window to see the back of a dark head of hair that belonged to whoever was keeping the door closed.

From up on the stair landing, the voice loudly said to someone listening in through some manner, “I’ve got him cornered now! Thanks for helping me out with this, Tharja, it’s going to be so great to get to see an old friend again!”

“Tharja…” The name fell from Frederick’s mouth as he started to scowl, shaking on the door to try and disturb the woman holding it shut. She turned and looked, in surprise, at who was glaring at her through the window, giving him a small wave as she watched someone come up behind him, an over-eager look on his face. The second a finger landed on Frederick, he lost all anger towards the person on the other side of the door and turned to give the person who had followed them down a piece of his mind, but when he was greeted with a grinning face and squinted-closed eyes, his anger ebbed. “It’s, ahem, been a while since we last spoke, hasn’t it been, Henry?”

“Sure has! Why, I remember it like it was just yesterday, coming up to that door and asking that all-important question, which I never even got an answer to!” Laughing like he was losing his mind, Henry doubled over with the force of his laughter, taking a moment to collect himself, much to Frederick’s obvious displeasure. “Say, how’s that wife of yours doing anyway? I’ve tried sending letters to your station addressed to her, but I’ve never gotten a response on a single one! I’ve just got to know about, well, you know. The baby thing.”

Taking in a deep breath and holding it for as long as he could while he thought about everything he’d just heard, Frederick gave a quick “this is why we hid” look to Vaike, who was watching this strange guy with suspicion in his eyes, before exhaling and pulling his phone from his pocket. “Whoever gets our mail must have been withholding letters from you, I’ve never seen one in my life,” he replied, flipping through folders of pictures on his phone before settling on the perfect one, which he opened and handed the phone over to Henry. “But if children are what you’re asking about, I suppose I could show you.”

“Aw yeah, I love babies! They’re so cute to hold, and cuddle, and you’re lucky to have had two of them, I can’t wait until I get to even have one!” With every picture he looked through, Henry was growing more and more thrilled to have gotten the opportunity he now had, but he abruptly stopped scanning through the pictures and looked to Vaike, giving a one-handed gesture in his direction. “Say, who’s this guy? I don’t remember him being there that night when I totally called things. New recruit or what?”

“Name’s Vaike, I ain’t a new recruit, ya must’ve been there when I was trapped up in a cabin for a week.” Giving a wave of his own, Vaike tried to get a glimpse of what picture Henry had landed on to distract him from looking, but all he saw was a darkened screen. “So what’s all this ‘bout babies and you callin’ things?” No one’s bothered tellin’ the Vaike a damn thing about any ‘a this.”

“Vaike, that’s not the kind of—“

“No one’s told you? Oh man, I’ll enlighten you real quick! So there we were, me and Tharja, who, by the way, is my police partner and best friend of all time, but there we were, stuck in Ylisstol on Christmas Eve, going to the holiday party at the police station for a few hours before our flight was supposed to leave, when all of a sudden, bam! Instant snowstorm that trapped us all there!” Henry was speaking with glee in his voice, his hands overly energetic and constantly almost about to throw the phone he was holding to the side.

“—no seriously, you can stop the story right there.” Not taking lightly to having been cut off, Frederick held his hand out as if he was expecting to get his phone back, but Henry kept it in his possession. “Now give that back before—“

“So _anyway_ , there we were, now stuck in Ylisstol’s police station with all these officers having a good time! It was chaos! People were sad they were going to be missing Christmas morning! And,” Henry grinned, nudging a shoulder in Frederick’s direction, “this big guy right here, him and his wife decided to sneak off and, for lack of a delicate way to say this, make themselves a new baby!”  
“Hold on, since when was that kid made there in the station? Thought you said that you’d never get caught doin’ anythin’ against the rules like that.” Vaike was enjoying watching how excited Henry was to have been telling the story, as well as watching how mortified Frederick was to be hearing it told. “C’mon, what happened t’my friend who’s all about followin’ rules and not breakin’ ‘em?”

“It was a…complicated situation. I would rather not elaborate on it, thank you.” Once again gesturing to be given his phone back, Frederick was greeted with Henry holding it up closer to his face to look at a few more pictures. “And you have had enough time seeing my sons, please give the phone back before I take it from you.”

If Henry had heard what threat had been made, he was clearly ignoring it, because he was still focused on seeing all that he could. “Whoa, so this is what happened to that other girl? What was her name? Does her name even matter? She’s gotten—okay I _hear_ you, I’m done looking now!” Frederick’s loud shushing must have been harder to ignore than any threats, and it was after getting Henry to stop mid-sentence that he was given his phone back, the screen still lit up with a picture for a few seconds before Frederick shut it off. And in that few seconds, Vaike in his interest in who, exactly, Henry was talking about with those questions glanced over and saw something he couldn’t quite explain to himself.

Before he could ask for any sort of clarification on the picture, the door behind him and Frederick opened up, the dark-haired woman that had been blocking it sinisterly laughing as she opened their way into the lobby. “My apologies, I must not have realized someone aside from Henry was in there,” she said, clearly lying as she’d made eye contact with Frederick long before Henry had even gotten down the stairs. “Call this a payback for not bringing my soulmate along with you.”

“Uh, who’s this chick’s soulmate?” It wasn’t the question he had wanted to ask, but it was the one that made its way out of Vaike’s mouth towards Frederick, but the other man was too busy pushing past the woman trying to get away from Henry to listen. So, rather than drop that subject too, he looked at the woman and posed his question to her instead. “Didn’t mean t’overhear what ya just said to my friend there, but who’s your soulmate and how’s he supposed t’bring him for ya?”

“You’re the man Chrom says replaced him on this trip.” Whoever this woman was, she was make it clear that she knew the Ylissean forces as well as Henry did, and using that information plus that time Frederick had muttered a name at her through the window, Vaike was able to assume this was that Tharja lady, the other visitor of sorts on that holiday he missed. “Why would you replace my Robin? He belongs with me, and he’s due for a visit here to lovely Plegia.”

Blinking twice, Vaike attempted to make sense of what he’d just heard. “Don’t know if you know this, lady, but my pal Robin’s married and got two kids, he can’t be anyone’s soulmate but his wife’s. Why’s he ‘due for a visit’ t’this place, anyway? Ain’t like he cares about anything out here, since his family’s not here.”

“Ha, you’re wrong!” Henry interjected from behind them, bursting into laugher. “I like this guy, acting so big and mighty but being so, so wrong! I wish he’d been there for that party, he’d have made it all sorts of fun!”

“Silence, Henry. He might be wrong but it’s obvious that he’s just…mis-educated. However, this isn’t the time to correct his ignorance, not when there’s plenty of time for us to do that later, given who all might be here. Yes…,” Tharja, in all her off-putting glory, placed her hands together in front of her mouth and cackled, “I have a feeling that we’ll have a lot of fun with you here, Vaike.”

“Hey, wait a sec, I didn’t tell ya my name, did I?” He was not answered, Tharja stepping away and Henry following behind her, his chuckles carrying through the groups of people gathered there in the lobby. Without them around, and with Frederick having gone off already to find Chrom, he was standing alone while surrounded by hundreds of strangers all getting to know one another, a position he did not want to be in at that moment. The doorway to the stairs was just steps away, he could always just duck back into the stairwell and head up to the room, socializing be damned.

Hiding to try and make sense of all the things he was finding out wasn’t the most logical option at that moment, though; that title would belong to finding Chrom and letting him know where he was before he did anything. He gave a quick look around the lobby, arching up onto his toes to try and look over everyone’s heads, but there was no sight of the blue hair that he was so accustomed to looking for, and there was no way he’d be able to pick Frederick’s head out of the crowd, so many other having similar hair to his. This trip was already a disaster and it had barely started, so maybe going back to the room was the best idea after all, an idea he decided to act on by turning back towards the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” The voice wasn’t one Vaike had been hoping to hear, nor was it the voice of anyone he was going to stop and talk to, leading him to step ever closer back towards the stairs. “No, do not go back up there. I was sent to get you by your chief, he wanted to make sure a terrible fate hadn’t befallen you.”

“Ya can talk like ya care all ya want, but I doubt Chrom’s stupid enough t’send you of all people to come get me.” Mentally pulling his hair out in frustration at having to actually talk to Lon’qu, Vaike fully expected to be left alone after that. When a hand latched onto his shoulder and pulled him backwards with a lot more force than he thought possible, he realized he had been mistaken. “Get your filthy hand off ‘a me, ya woman-stealer. I don’t want anythin’ to do with you so just leave me alone!”

“I have a name that is much more appropriate than ‘woman-stealer’ and I would appreciate you learning it as we shall be spending a lot of time together at this conference,” Lon’qu scolded, letting go of Vaike’s shoulder just long enough for the blond to try getting away again. Once he’d pulled him back a second time, he continued, “And I expect you to tell Chrom exactly what you said regarding him being stupid when we get over to him, because yes, he did send me of all people to come get you.”

“C’mon, you’re kiddin’ me, he wouldn’t have.” It was a belief that Vaike held onto until he and Lon’qu both were standing in Chrom’s presence, him explaining his reasoning for picking Lon’qu to go find the wayward officer. Apparently, once it was spelled out that sending someone with a high ranking made more sense than having a chief of police walking through a crowd containing his equals, it was a lot easier to believe, but it didn’t take away from the fact that sending Lon’qu had been asking for trouble had Vaike felt like getting into it. “Okay, but here’s an idea, Chrom: next time ya need t’find me, send Frederick instead. Y’know I can stand him. I can’t stand that, gah, brother-in-law you’ve got there.”

“I’m proud of you for using the correct term,” Chrom said, not paying attention to how Vaike was grimacing at having used it, “but you’ve got to learn to get along with him. I’m not saying it will happen, but who knows? Maybe he’ll be becoming a temporary part of our department here in the near future.”

“And why would that happen? He’s got a job in Ferox, ain’t that good enough for him?” Watching as Chrom’s eyes shifted downward, trying to avoid having to answer what had just been asked, Vaike let his mind wander back to what he’d seen on Frederick’s phone screen there in the stairwell, the picture that Henry had been criticizing. “Hold on a minute, you all ain’t tellin’ me somethin’ here. There’s somethin’ that’s goin’ on you’re trying to shield me from, ain’t there?”

He looked over at where Lon’qu and Frederick had started having a conversation, acting like they were close friends discussing current events in their lives, before turning back to Chrom, who was now staring down at the floor, kicking at one of the tiles he was standing on. “I won’t say that there is, but I won’t say that there isn’t either. What it might be is something that doesn’t concern you, though.”

The sinking feeling deep inside of Vaike’s body was telling him that he knew just enough to piece together what this secret news was, but he didn’t want to accept it. He couldn’t bring himself to accept it. It was still hard enough, three and a half years later, to accept that she’d left him like she had, but to accept all these new developments? Almost anything would be easier than doing that! “If it doesn’t concern me,” he finally said, picking his words carefully, “then I hope ya never make me interact with that woman-stealin’, life-ruinin’ asshole that she’s with again. Ever.”

“That’s not an exchange I can make and you know it, Vaike.” He did know it, but he didn’t want to accept that, either. This conference was shaping up to be a lot worse than initially expected, at this rate, and it all came back to relating to the events of the last time he’d been away from home for more than an overnight. How much influence could one week in a cabin really have on the years following it?


	2. Welcome to...Ferox?

“I don’t think this is the way we’re supposed to be going. The sign didn’t say to turn off here to get to Ylisstol, and we seriously just had a snack break an hour ago. Are you sure you know how to get us home, Maribelle?” Her voice filled with worry as she watched their car slow down from highway speeds to come to a complete stop, Lissa gave a timid glance over in the direction of the driver, who was currently sitting with her tongue half-out of her mouth as she thought about which way to go. “I don’t think you know where we’re going after all. Oh gods. Oh geez. We’re going to get lost and everything’s going to go completely wrong and it’s all because I trusted you for directions!”

“Calm down, Lissa, all this stressing out is not going to do you any favors. I know exactly where I’m going, this just happened to be a back way to get home. I assured your husband and mine both that we would be in Ylisstol by tonight, but no one told me we weren’t allowed to see some of the gorgeous mountain scenery while we were on our way.” Making a turn that she had been over-preparing for, Maribelle started the car down a two-lane road that quickly became winding and desolate, the road sometimes coming right on the edge of a cliff that she was careful to stay far away from.

There in the passenger’s seat, Lissa’s eyes were fixated on the winding road before them, trying her hardest not to look at any cliff-side falls that they could take if Maribelle took a corner a bit too tightly. “I don’t think I’m enjoying this ‘scenic’ route too much,” she eventually said, bringing a hand to cover her mouth. “It’s making me feel really sick to my stomach and I don’t think I want to ask you to pull over…”

“That might be a good idea, it would be wildly unsafe for me to pull over anywhere on this road. Promise you this, my dear, when we get somewhere I can pull off I will do it for you.” Maribelle gave a quick glance to her passenger, smiling sweetly as she did, before checking her rear-view mirror to see two sleeping boys taking a quick nap in the backseat, the smaller one resting his head on the older one’s shoulder. “Hopefully that time will come before either of them wake up, I don’t think I could handle their crying on this particular stretch of road today.”

“That’s because you’re having to deal with my whining, isn’t it?” Jutting her lower lip out behind her hand, and swallowing down hard to keep something that didn’t belong from coming up, Lissa gave a deep sigh when she got the chance, watching as Maribelle brought her eyes back to the road without any indication of whether she was right or not. “Okay, well, this is what you get for taking a scenic route! I told you, I didn’t even want to have to be in the car at all!”

“Yes, yes, I heard you then and I hear you now, you want nothing to do with car rides because you find it hard to keep from throwing up while on them, I understand. Perhaps this way wasn’t my brightest idea, but when you see the sights in store on it, you’ll know why I insisted on going this way.” After taking another sharp turn that would have put them off a cliff had she messed up in any way, Maribelle carefully and slowly took one hand off of the steering wheel once the road had straightened up for a moment. As she let the car slow down as to not rush what she was trying to do, she reached for and grabbed her best friend’s hand, rubbing the top of it with her thumb. “Trust me, it might be bad now but it’s all worth it.”

Lissa sighed again, dropping her other hand to let it rest on top of Maribelle’s. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about with that one. Is it this particular road? The road trip in general? Being extra-super pregnant? I mean, there’s so many possibilities with that one.”

“I was referring to this road, but I can see why you’d think it’s any of the other choices.” With another curve coming up, Maribelle had to retract her hand so that she could steer properly, but before she brought it back to the wheel she made sure to get a quick brush of it against the large, swollen curve of Lissa’s stomach. “Gods, I mean, I’m trying not to think too much about that baby in there, but…I bet he’s all that’s on your mind, isn’t he?”

“Between worrying about if he’s okay and worrying if his daddy’s okay, oh, and worrying if we’re going to die out here on this road you’ve decided to take, I’ve got a lot that’s on my mind.” Now bringing both of her own hands to rest on her stomach, Lissa gave a small, forced smile that reflected back at her through the side mirror. “I’m just a huge mess right now, and you’re having to put up with me whining and complaining and wanting anything but what you’ve got for me, and I’m so sorry about that.”

Maribelle softly clicked her tongue, shaking her head as she did. “There is simply no reason for you to be apologizing right now. I volunteered myself for this task of caring for you while Lon’qu is at that conference, I knew exactly what it was I was going to be having to deal with. Besides, if you could put up with me through me having two children, I can handle you expecting your first.”

“Yeah, but we didn’t decide to go on any long road trips when you could have started having either one of those babies! It’s totally different!” Her voice was raising in volume, making Maribelle worry if either of the boys in the back seat would wake up from the noise. “I just can’t believe that _Chrom_ thought this was a good idea, and that everyone backed him up on it! Like, couldn’t I just stay home by myself? Or, ooh, better yet? Couldn’t you have just come to stay with me there? Why do I have to be taken back to Ylisstol? It’s not like there’s anything there that I don’t have where I live now.”

“This is true, but I think the idea was to have you be somewhere familiar and surrounded by everyone who could possibly help you if the need arises. And since Chrom and Lon’qu both are heading to Plegia for the week, being back where you grew up seemed like the logical option to everyone, I suppose.” The road was winding once more, Maribelle having to hold off on conversation until she wasn’t taking sharp turns every moment, and once they were back on another flat stretch there in the Feroxi mountains, she was back to talking to her best friend as if a car ride was the place they would always talk. “I think it’s fitting, and this way, if anything were to happen while they’re gone, it’s probably much, much easier to get back to Ylisstol than to whatever dinky-little airport that was they were flying out of today.”

“I doubt anything’s going to happen while they’re gone, nothing’s happened yet and I really doubt it’s going to just, you know, decide to all happen now.” Returning to looking out the window at the road and trying to forget that they were high up in the mountains, Lissa found herself gently drumming her fingers on her stomach in tune with the car’s running sounds. “He’s just going to take his sweet time and I’m okay with that, especially since it means that Lon’qu will be able to be there.”

“He’d be able to be there if you started having that poor child tomorrow, that’s the beauty of you coming to stay with me while he’s gone.” Tilting her head and giving her friend a look from the corners of her eyes, Maribelle smiled as she watched how peaceful Lissa seemed to be as she kept herself from losing her mind there in the car. “This ride isn’t as bad as you thought it was, is it?” she asked, hoping to hear the best possible answer.

Of course, what she got was far from what she wanted. “No, this is definitely a really bad car ride. I don’t feel as sick as I did when we started coming through the mountains, but I am pretty sure that whenever we can stop, I’m going to make it maybe a step away from the car before I start throwing up.” When Lissa looked back at Maribelle, she was trying her hardest to smile in return, but as the corners of her lips would tick upward she would pull them straight back down, the color in her cheeks fading away. “Are we going to be able to stop soon, anyway? I think we really should…”

“I’m afraid not. We’ve got quite a ways to go on this road before we’ll be able to pull over safely.” The groan that came in response was almost heartbreaking to Maribelle to hear, but she shrugged it off as she once again started focusing on upcoming curves. “It doesn’t help that I am taking this road all too carefully today. Last thing I need is to come up too fast on something and slam on my brakes, I don’t need to accidentally induce labor in you.”

“As if you’d be able to do that. Trust me, if walking around town for hours doesn’t do the trick I doubt a sudden stop would do it.” Lissa was going back to her mindless staring, trying to keep her mind off of how uncomfortable and sick she felt at the moment, but with every curve they took she was unable to completely forget. Whenever the road would straighten out she would give small sighs of relief, but she knew that more was coming to make her suffer, and she was internally screaming at Maribelle for picking such a winding route for them to take.

Externally, though, she was finding herself less and less able to speak without feeling like she was moments from throwing up, and so she was becoming more silent with every passing curve. “These are the kinds of car rides I enjoy,” Maribelle said after yet another set of tight curves. “Ones where everyone else is silent and we can just enjoy each other’s company without everyone talking over one another.”

She wasn’t expecting an answer, having seen Lissa start withdrawing from conversation to keep herself from getting sick, so when a small voice in the backseat piped up, she was pleasantly surprised. “Ma, where are we?” the bigger of the two boys asked, rubbing at his eyes after having woken up. “Are we goin’ home?”

“We’re on our way home, yes, my sweet Brady. Why don’t you go ahead and go back to sleep, we’re still far from home and there’s quite a while before we’ll be stopping.” She looked to the mirror to see the boy, tiredly rubbing his hand down his cheek, give her a nod of agreement before letting his eyes flutter back closed. “Phew, and here I was being worried that him waking up would only lead to—“

“Mama, where we goin’?” As if right on cue, the other little boy in the back seat had woken up, startling his older brother back awake as well.  His arms immediately going to flailing instead of something more calm, he called out, “Mama, pwease!”

“—I hear you, my child! We’re on our way home, go back to sleep so it’s like we get there faster!” She glanced over at Lissa and how the other woman had started dozing off herself, her eyes tightly closed and her breathing the only sign that she wasn’t sitting there dead, before looking back to the scene in the back seat, two eager-eyes boys staring at her. “Please, you two, your aunt Lissa is trying to sleep right now and you do not want to wake her up, she isn’t feeling well at the moment. If you two sleep some more, then everything will be okay and we’ll all be happy and home soon enough.”

“Okay, Ma, we can sleep.” Feigning closing his eyes again, having been awoken a bit too much by his brother’s outburst, Brady leaned his head onto his brother’s shoulder this time and gave a couple fake snores before he was whacked on the nose for it. “Ow! Why you hittin’ me, Freddy? Ma said sleep, so we’re gonna sleep!”

“What was that about hitting? Oh, is someone being a naughty child back there?” She’d put a stern tone on her voice, something that was unusual for when she was speaking to either of her children, but now that she was their only parent around for the week she figured she’d need to play the role their father played with them. When she got a shrieking in response, followed by Brady’s insistence that he’d been hit again, she knew what she needed to do, and that was pull the car over to gently remind her younger child a few rules of how to behave when on a car ride.

The one issue with that was that, just like it had been with Lissa asking if they could possibly stop, there just wasn’t anywhere safe for them to pull off when they were driving along cliffs. Even though she hadn’t seen a single other car the entire time they’d been on the road, Maribelle knew that the moment she stopped, they’d be in danger of someone whipping around a turn and striking their car, and she couldn’t risk that chance. Trying her hardest to block out the screeching from the back seat, she continued driving, giving occasional words of scolding to the offending child, who thought it was more of a game than anything serious and therefore continued on with his bad behavior.

It was nearly an hour later when there was a turn-off that Maribelle figured would be safe enough to stop at, a large gravel section alongside the road between it and an adjacent road. Coming to a complete stop in the gravel, the tires kicking up dust as they slowed, she was quick to turn the car off and unbuckle herself, the sound of the clicking a noise that was able to wake Lissa up when the children in the back hadn’t. “W-where are we? Have we made it to Ylisse yet?” she groggily asked, looking around to see Maribelle shaking her head. “Then why have we stopped? Can I get out for a minute?”

“Go on ahead and get out, I’ll be dealing with a couple naughty children so you can do as you wish.” Opening her door and climbing out of the car, the crisp mountain air feeling nice on her skin, Maribelle watched as Lissa slowly got out as well, or at least, she watched her get to the point where she was half-out of the car. That was when she decided to do what had prompted her to stop the car in the first place, opening the door right behind hers and reaching into the car, undoing the straps on the car seat that the younger of the two boys was fastened into. “Now, now, little Frederick, why are you acting up like this?”

The boy, looking very much like the spitting image of the father he was named for, scrunched his face at the question his mother had posed at him. “Mama, we go out now?” he asked in response, noticing that he’d been freed from his seatbelts so that he could move around. “We go out pwease?”

She sighed, shaking her head and looking to her other child to see what he was doing, but she found that Brady had taken the moment of being still to unbuckle himself and lay down on the seat, looking very comfortable as he did. “We’re not where we’re going yet, my child. It’s not time to get out quite yet, I just stopped to keep you two from fighting.” She bit down on her lip as the child asked to get out again. “No, not yet, we’re not there yet! Gods damn it all, why don’t you get that part?”

“But Ma, where _are_ we goin’?” Brady asked, sitting back up and leaning in close to his mother to keep her from growing more frustrated, although it had the opposite effect on her, something he noticed. “Okay, we’re just goin’.”

“It’s not that we’re ‘just going’ somewhere, it’s that…” Maribelle made a quick glance at whatever Lissa was doing, which was pacing around a few steps outside of the car, her hands both covering her mouth as she had her head tilted backwards—a clear sign that she was trying her hardest to keep herself from getting sick out there. “…well, it’s that we’re going somewhere she doesn’t know about. A secret place. All for you two, my precious boys.”

“So not home?” Trying to follow along with what his mother was telling him, Brady seemed to get excited when she nodded at him. “Oh, okay! We’re just goin’, but not home. That’s good, that’s fun.” His words were overshadowed by his brother screeching again, earning himself a reminder that such behavior wasn’t allowed, especially not once they started driving again.

Making sure that both of her boys were re-buckled before she closed the door on them, Maribelle had one last thing to tell them: “Do not mention that we’re not going home until we get to where we are going. I haven’t told Lissa and I don’t think she’ll appreciate knowing what my plan is, especially since there’s nothing she can do about it. But how was I going to pass up having my boys here in Ferox without doing this _one_ thing?” The two boys nodded, both looking excited at what was coming, and so she shut the door and walked around the back of the car, ending up right in the path of where Lissa had been pacing. “Lissa, my dear, are you ready to get going once more? The boys are just as restless as you are, and if we keep going we should be home in a few hours.”

“A few hours?” Stopping dead in her tracks, Lissa leaned her head back forward and opened an eye at Maribelle, looking at her with suspicion. “But we’ve been driving so long already, this is so stupid! Why couldn’t we have just flown to Ylisstol?”

“Ignoring the part where I would not fly with my sons unless I would die otherwise, do you really think that they would have let someone who looks as pregnant as you on a plane?” Watching as Lissa gave a shrug, Maribelle gave her friend a once-over, reinforcing her statement with a simple glance towards the large, rounded stomach she carried before her. “I think they’d have taken one look at you and sent you home, possibly told you to put your feet up or something, you poor thing.”

“If we’d have flown, I could get to put my feet up faster, you know.” Dropping her hands from her mouth, Lissa revealed the pained and sickened expression she’d been hiding behind them. “But no, instead I have to deal with being in a car and it’s doing nothing but making everything worse!”

Maribelle rolled her eyes, pointing towards the passenger-side door that Lissa had left open when she’d gotten out of the car. “I’m sorry, but up here in the mountains there’s not much else to do but to get back in and keep going. We’ve got to get there somehow, and driving’s the only way that makes a lick of sense.”

“Once we get to your house, you’re not getting me to go anywhere unless it’s necessary,” she said, giving a dramatic sigh in defeat. “Which means that, until it’s time for me to have this baby, I am not leaving your house.” As she made her way back to her seat in the car, Maribelle watched her walk, stifling a laugh at how over-the-top she was making her steps in an attempt to gain sympathy.

However, she didn’t call that out until they were once again on the road, the boys in the back seat completely silent as they waited for whatever the “secret” thing their mother had promised them when she’d talked to them. “You know, Lissa my dearest, the way you walk might have something to do with why you can’t seem to just ‘walk him out’. Maybe if you, I don’t know, tried walking like a normal person instead of an overdramatic—“

“Don’t even _talk_ to me about walking and being overdramatic, Maribelle.” Shooting a disgusted glare in her friend’s direction, Lissa had one arm wrapped around her stomach the best she could manage while she had the other resting on top of it, her fingers lightly tapping. “I’m pretty sure I have video somewhere of how bad you were about it, I’m nowhere near as obnoxious with it as you ever were.”

“I won’t argue against that, but I also didn’t have the problem of an unwilling child who needs coaxing to come into the world. You could use some natural help, and properly walking could do it for you.” She fell silent, suddenly feeling a bit awkward talking about ways to induce labor with someone when her two children were present, listening to every word that was said, and when she spoke again she had changed the subject entirely. “At any rate, how are you feeling now that you’ve gotten to step outside for a little bit? Still sick, I presume, but not as bad? Worse?”

“You already know the answer to that,” Lissa replied, closing her eyes and nestling her head up against the window. “Now I’m going to try sleeping again to hopefully wake up to us getting there, or at least getting close, so please don’t disappoint me on this one, Maribelle.”

Not liking how Lissa was talking to her, Maribelle muttered some promise that she would try not to disappoint, but she knew that what was coming would undoubtedly lead to such disappointment. With the car becoming silent as their conversation ended, she glanced in the mirror to see her two wide-eyed boys waiting for them to get to the secret place she’d promised, and just the sight of them brought a smile to her lips. “Just because I’m supposed to get her to Ylisstol today doesn’t mean I’m going to,” she said to herself, focusing on the road once more. “It’s a bad idea to have someone as pregnant as she is trapped in a car for so long, so I know tht one overnight along the way will be best.”

The road was getting winding again, something that Maribelle took as them getting closer to where it was she was planning on turning off. She remembered having been told that it was down in a valley in the mountains, just off the road there before it got to the downslope that took it into Ylisse, but she hadn’t expected the turn to come up so quickly. Obviously, anyone who was planning on getting there either knew its exact location or was coming from the other direction, but Maribelle was able to make the turn safely and make the trip down through the surrounding mountain peaks into the small valley that looked alive with color and buildings up there in middle of nowhere.

“I can’t believe this place is actually real, and that we’re actually here,” she said as she brought the car to a stop alongside the two already sitting there in front of the main cabin at the camp, parking between the big truck and the other small family car. When she shut the car off, watching Lissa start to stir once more, she was quick to look back into the back seat and motion for the boys to get themselves out of their seats, something they were quick to do. When she looked back through the windshield, there was a woman standing in front of the car, arms crossed over her chest as she shook her head at what she was seeing.

Giving a wave at the woman, Maribelle expected to be left alone at least long enough to get herself and her sons out of the car before she was approached, but then that woman came straight for the door, opening it before Maribelle had even taken her seatbelt off. “I should have known you’d be stopping by, given that we knew you were up in Ferox, but did you _really_ have to bring her?” the woman hissed, nodding in Lissa’s direction. “Damn it Maribelle, not only is her sister-in-law here, but you know very well what’s happened involving me and her both. You’re a dumbass for thinking she’s welcomed here.”

“Well excuse me for not abandoning her somewhere along the way,” Maribelle replied, finally undoing her seatbelt so that she could get out of the car and meet the other woman face-to-face. “My job, as requested by everyone, was to get her to Ylisstol for the time while Lon’qu is at the conference. I’m just making a quick stop here for the night so that the boys can play with the horses. Is that too much to ask for?”

“W-where are we now?” Once again waking up and completely disoriented, Lissa looked to where Maribelle should have been sitting and found her already out of the car, in the middle of conversation with someone. She scrambled to get herself out, not recognizing the building she was seeing before them but having fond memories of the car she nearly hit with the door she opened, having to get it to as wide of an opening as possible to get herself out without brushing against anything. It was then, when she was standing up outside of the car, that she turned and saw not just the person Maribelle was talking to, but the vehicle they were both standing beside, her eyes going wide at the sight. “M-Maribelle, why are we anywhere that she is?”

But Maribelle hadn’t heard the question, still in the middle of talking to the person who had approached her. Said person was making the occasion glance over in Lissa’s direction as she spoke, shaking her head and looking utterly displeased at her presence. “If I had known you were bringing her along, I would have told you hell no, you’re not coming here. Her being here is a ticking time bomb on many different levels, none of which I want anything to do with. Get back and your car and get gone.”

“Please, it’s just for tonight. We can speak to Olivia and her children, she’ll keep a secret under Chrom’s nose if it’s all in good fun and nothing goes wrong due to it, and as long as no one says a word to anyone about this visit ever, we’ll be golden.” Maribelle pressed her hands together in front of her, bowing her head. “Sully, I’m begging you, just this one night, for the sake of my little boys who have done so good with all our driving today.”

“I do like that you’re begging, as if that’ll change how I feel about her, but…I don’t know. I know I’ll get an earful the second anyone realizes you’re here, and double that when they find out she’s here, but it’s not like I’m the one who came up with the damn idea for you to show up, so maybe I won’t get blamed.” Raising an eyebrow as she watched Maribelle perk up and get very excited at the change in response, Sully continued, “But, you have to promise me that you’ll be back on your way tomorrow. No excuses.”

“As if we could afford to stay past breakfast tomorrow! I’ve arranged a playdate for these boys with some kids back in Ylisstol tomorrow afternoon, and I know if they miss that, someone will know we never made it home and therefore grow suspicious and tell someone.” Grinning, Maribelle opened up her arms for a hug but rather than take the offer, Sully turned away and headed back for the cabin she’d been in before the car had pulled up. Once she was out of earshot, Maribelle turned to look at Lissa, and saw that her best friend was staring at her, rapidly shaking her head as she did. “Oh, don’t you start with this idea-changing thing too, it’s just one night.”

“Do you not realize the, um, history? between me and her?” Lissa’s voice was completely high-pitched, as she waved an arm in the direction Sully had gone off in. “She’s the reason I left my last boyfriend, remember? Because she couldn’t keep her hands off of him and he couldn’t keep his off of her and—“

“First of all, you’re getting far too worked up over this,” Maribelle interrupted, internally cringing at the incorrect chain of events she’d just heard, “and secondly, even if that were the case and she had enabled your last boyfriend in cheating on you, you didn’t do yourself any favors with cheating on him.”

Lissa’s arm-waving stopped, as she slammed her hand down on the side of the car. “I didn’t cheat on him, he knew we were over before I even flirted with Lon’qu once!”

“We’ve had this argument many times, we’re not having it again.” Maribelle, completely ignoring all of her input into that whole messy situation, waited until both her best friend was calmed down and her kids were out of the car on their own before she did anything else, that being to grab her keys out of the ignition and get all doors on her side closed, taking both of her sons by the hand and starting to lead them to the cabin. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, we’re going to take advantage of being at a summer camp with horses for the day.”

“You just…you can’t…Maribelle!” Growing frustrated with what had just happened, Lissa slammed her door closed and chased after her friend to the best of her ability, being very mindful of how she stepped as to not earn more criticism of being overdramatic with her walking. She caught up to her right in front of the door into the house, grabbing one of Maribelle’s long ringlets and giving it a hard tug. The scream of pain her friend gave was almost worth the deathly glare she was shot for it. “You’re totally abusing what you’re supposed to have done by coming up to Ferox to get me! This isn’t fair!”

“I’m not abusing anything, not like how you just abused me by pulling my hair like a child. What a great example you’re setting for my children, teaching them that pulling someone’s hair because they don’t do what you want them to is acceptable.” It wasn’t that Maribelle sounded upset by what Lissa had just done, but rather that she was upset that her children had been there to witness it; however, judging by how the two boys were trying to pull their mother’s hands forward closer to the house, they most likely hadn’t seen it.

Lissa realized this and pointed it out, saying, “As if they care about what I did to you right then! They just want to see the horses here, which is great, except for the fact that we are not supposed to be here because _you_ are supposed to have been taking _me_ home to your house!”

“Yes, I know that is what was agreed upon when this whole thing was planned, but it’s one night. Nothing bad will happen, we already know this, so you can just spend tonight sitting in this place, waiting for tomorrow to come, and when it does, we will get home like you’ve wanted and act like none of this ever happened.” Punctuating her sentence with a smirk, her smugness quickly faded when Lissa went for another ringlet, giving it an even harder tug. “What has gotten into you right now, Lissa? You’re acting like an immature brat!”

“I’m acting like someone who is trying to stop someone else from making a big, huge mistake!” Tugging Maribelle’s hair again, Lissa didn’t notice a couple of heads poking out from one of the other doorways on the front side of the building they were standing in front of, eyes watching her intently. “Come on, let’s just go, please?”

Taking in a deep breath, Maribelle denied her friend her request and made it to the front door, directing one of the boys to open it and then letting them go inside. With the door still open, she turned back to look at Lissa, smirking once more. “Too late, I’m afraid, my friend. Relax, don’t stress out so much, and enjoy the time we’ll have here. It’s not too much longer until you won’t get moments of relaxing much anymore.”

With that having been said, Maribelle went inside and left the door slightly ajar in case Lissa wanted to follow her, but she had no intentions of doing that right away. “You’re kidding me! All I asked for was to get to your house, not to have any of this detour business!” Throwing her head back and screaming, she still did not notice either of the people watching from the other door, not until she had let out all her anger and was preparing to actually go inside. When she looked in that direction and saw two heads of blue hair sticking out into the open air, she froze, forcing a smile as she did. “O-oh, how goes it, Lucina, Inigo?”

“Told you that was Aunt Lissa. Looks like you owe me that candy bar after all.” Coming out from the doorway, covered in hay as if he’d been rolling around in a hay bale, Inigo gave a large wave in his aunt’s direction, while Lucina poked back inside the stable they’d been hiding out in, a fact he realized when he never got an answer. “Lucy? Where’d you go? Don’t you want to say hi?”

“She’s probably getting your mom, who’s going to tell your dad, who’s going to tell Lon’qu, who is going to kill me the next time he sees me.” Sighing, Lissa took a few steps closer to her nephew while he did the same in her direction, meeting her right in the middle. “So, uh, if it comes down to it, you wouldn’t be the one to tell your dad a thing, would you?”

“Lips are sealed,” he replied, miming zipping his lips closed. “But Lucy might tell him, even if I don’t do it. We’ll get in so much trouble if we _both_ keep this a secret, you know.”

“Keeping secrets from your dad isn’t that bad of an idea, especially not if we get your mom in on it and she keeps it secret too.” By then, that second door had opened up once more, Lucina and her mother coming outside, and when Lissa saw that Olivia had been brought to see her she lost all hope in her appearance up at the camp being secret at all. “She really did go get her,” she said to Inigo, who nodded, stepping back to let his mother and sister take his spot in front of her. “Er, hello, Olivia. I know I shouldn’t be here, but hear me out—“

“I don’t want to hear anything! Gods, you shouldn’t be standing like this right now!” Speaking softly but with panic in her voice, Olivia grabbed Lissa’s hands and brought them together so that she was holding them both right in front of them. “Come on, there’s plenty of space for you to be seated inside, I don’t want anything horrible to happen to you while you’re here, and that means none of this standing around business!”

“Yeah, Mother isn’t going to tell Father a word of this, as long as Aunt Lissa does exactly what she’s told while she’s here,” Lucina said to her brother, the two kids watching their mother starting to boss her sister-in-law around. “I guess she figured that this was going to happen, somehow. How could she have?”

Inigo shrugged, looking at his sister to see that she was looking back at him. “I don’t know, but do you know what I do know?” When she asked him to elaborate, he did it without hesitation. “I know that we were about to ride some horses, and I would really like to get back to that if we could.”

“Good plan! No matter how interesting Mother and Aunt Lissa’s conversation is, we can see them talk a lot more often than we can ride horses!” At that, the two kids went back into the stable, leaving the pink-haired woman out there without her children’s support as she slowly and carefully coaxed Lissa to come with her into the house, promising her a multitude of things, including that Chrom would never know what was happening and that nothing bad would happen if she stepped foot in the cabin.

However, Olivia was being generous with that last promise, because the moment the door closed on her and Lissa, Sully was coming towards them with anger in her eyes. “I don’t recall saying she could be in here,” she said, pointing towards Lissa. “Make her sleep out in the car or something tonight, she’s not staying here. I can’t afford the trouble this’ll cause. Maribelle, okay, I can tolerate her staying tonight, but this one? Hell no.”

“There’s going to be no trouble that comes of it,” Olivia replied, letting go of Lissa’s hands to grab Sully’s instead. “We’re all going to have a lovely night of talking and interacting like friends do, and then when morning comes I’m sure they’ll be on their way and we’ll be able to brush this off like nothing happened.”

“We will be leaving in the morning,” Maribelle reinforced, standing by the slightly-opened door between the house and the stable, keeping an eye on her boys as they played in the stalls outside while listening in on the conversation. “I have to be back at the house by tomorrow afternoon, lest I ruin a playdate and let everyone know we are somewhere we shouldn’t be.”

“See? Maribelle’s got this all planned out, I think we can trust in her and what thought she’s put into this.” Smiling, Olivia watched as Sully not only shook her head, but threw off the hands that held hers, that action making the smile fade into nothingness. “Please don’t be so sour about Lissa being here, she’s really a sweet person.”

The finger was being pointed at Lissa once more, and this time, Sully made no reservations about keeping it at a distance. She got right into Lissa’s face, the blonde shrinking back and nearly falling into the door behind her as she tried to keep away from the angry woman, but still she ended up with a finger pressed against the tip of her nose. “She might be sweet, but she’s done something to hurt someone I happen to care about more than she ever could, and I can’t forgive her for that.” Bringing her thumb to her finger as she curled it back a bit, she flicked at Lissa’s nose to try and intimidate her further. “I don’t want her here, but I’m at a damn disadvantage on this one, so she can stay for the night, I _guess_ , but she’s not getting any sort of special treatment just because she’s pregnant.”

“I’m not asking for special treatment, I didn’t even ask to come up here!”

“Yeah, as if I’m believing that lie.” Stepping back and giving a loud sigh as she turned away, Sully once again pointed a finger at Lissa, but this time over her shoulder as she walked into the small living room of the cabin. “But whatever, you’re here and I’m sure tonight’s going to go from ‘me sitting by myself while the guests do their thing’ time to ‘let’s all listen to the damn ticking time bomb talk about her problems’ time.”

“I don’t think calling her a time bomb is exactly very nice,” Olivia said, knowing that due to her soft voice she was going to be ignored. “But you’re probably right that we will spend tonight talking to her about everything. It’s not every day that we get to see her anymore, not since she got married…”

“Huh, I wonder whose fault that is.” Stopping for a second to look over at the door where Maribelle was still standing guard, Sully glared at the woman there, casting all blame for that particular situation onto her with a well-timed eye motion. “But whatever, you three have your chat session and I’ll, I don’t know, hang out with the kids in the stable with the horses all night. Always a fun thing to do.”

Maribelle gave the suggestion a thought, but ultimately took issue to it. “If by ‘kids’ you’re referring to the two you intended on having here, and only those two, I’m afraid you’re sorely mistaken. If you’re playing with the horses, my little ones will want to play too.”

“And I’m not babysitting your children for you. If you want to chit-chat, you’re doing it with your kids there with you. I agreed to spend this week with two older kids, not anyone more than that.” Continuing on her way to the living room, Sully sat down on the lone chair in the area, propping her feet up on the couch arm across from her. “This is my camp for right now, I’m running it how I damn well feel like running it.”

“If Lissa wasn’t here, you would be all for assisting my sons in riding horses and caring for them, please don’t take her being here out on me.” Growing frustrated with the way the woman was treating her, and conveniently forgetting that all of this would have been avoided had she done what she was told and not made any side-trips out of her task, Maribelle first hollered out into the stable to make sure that Lucina or Inigo could watch the two younger boys before slamming the door shut and loudly stomping over to where Sully was sitting. “And, if you’re going to act like queen of this castle, treat it with some respect!” she demanded, pushing the redhead’s feet off their perch. “You cannot be slob-like in a place you’re trying to rule with an iron fist.”

“Here I was, thinking Maribelle was going to pick a fight because of how her friend here is treating me, but nope, all she does is complain about dirty behaviors,” Lissa mumbled to Olivia, who silently nodded in agreement. “Like, okay, I get it that I might have been a bit rude to her before we came inside but…feet over me? Really?”

“She’s probably just working out her emotions in the way only she can,” Olivia said after a few moments of watching Sully put her feet back up just for Maribelle to push them down again, the two staring intensely at one another but seemingly having fun with their dispute. “Which is fine, it really is, except I think—“ this was where she raised her voice to as loud as she could possibly make it, “—a certain someone should get out of that chair so we can have our delicate and pregnant princess sitting somewhere comfortable.”

At the exact same time that Lissa tried to deny the “delicate” label she’d just been given, Sully gave a loud sigh and stood up, dramatically motioning towards the chair she’d been in with both arms. “Oh, how could I forget that she needs to be waited on hand and foot, even though she’s not even supposed to be here!” she snapped, earning three distinct looks from each of the other women, all of them unamused with how she was still carrying on. “This isn’t how this week was supposed to go. I did not agree to this, not once.”

“It’s just for _tonight_ ,” both Maribelle and Olivia said at the same time, Maribelle’s voice clearly overshadowing Olivia’s for the entire sentence, but it was the softer-spoken woman who continued speaking afterwards. “She might not have been invited by you but Maribelle brought her along, and I’m always a fan of being in her presence. Let go of all your bad feelings towards her for just this one night, please. Tomorrow once they’re gone you can fume about her having been here but while she’s here just let her live.”

It wasn’t a perfect agreement, and there was a lot to it that Sully was not thrilled with, but she was realizing just how much she was on the losing end of the conversation and so she dropped it, walking out of the cabin to the outdoors without another word. There was plenty of reason for the three remaining ladies to sit around and talk to each other just as it had been predicted they would, but something told Maribelle that doing just that was going to only make things worse. “Olivia, could you check on my kids for me while I run and do something?” she asked, getting a nod from the woman after she’d made sure that Lissa was seated and comfortable in the chair they’d vacated for her. “This shouldn’t take too long, and I have faith that your children have been able to keep mine safe, but…”

“You’re either about to approach Sully and make amends for what just happened, or you’re about to call your husband and tell him some wild story to make him never suspect you’re here,” Olivia predicted, catching Maribelle by surprise, “and I’m going to give you the time to do either one or both of them. Choice is yours, my friend.”

As Maribelle had been thinking of doing one of those two things in specific, the other option never having crossed her mind, she put on a smile and thanked Olivia for the encouragement and assistance before stepping outside for herself. The sun had gone down a bit in the time since they’d arrived, resting behind one of the mountain peaks surrounding the camp, making the entire valley become covered in a shadow, a sight that Maribelle found honestly beautiful. “And to think, if I’d never chosen to come up here, I wouldn’t have seen such a sight,” she told herself, before reminding herself why she’d come outside in the first place. Putting a hand to one side of her mouth to amplify her voice, she called out, “Sully! Where did you get off to?”

“None of your damn business!” she heard in response, which gave her enough of an audible clue as to where the woman had hidden. She walked past the two small family cars and ended up in front of the big truck that was sitting in front of the house, the driver’s side door sitting wide open and a trail of smoke coming out from behind it. The window was tinted and the lack of bright sunlight made it impossible for Maribelle to see what was happening behind the door, but she had her suspicions to the point that she walked right around the door to find Sully sitting there, burning a cigarette in front of her, it already half-ash. “Why did you have to do this to me?” she asked, flicking the ashes onto the ground, which Maribelle stomped on and put out before they could light anything on fire. “Bringing her up here like this, why’d you do it?”

“In all honesty, I thought you wouldn’t mind it too much,” Maribelle replied, her foot still twisting in the dirt underneath it. “I figured you’d be upset about it for a minute or two before letting it slide. Does what happened that involved you and her both still bother you that much?”

“It doesn’t bother me, but I’m not the one I’m worried about.” There was another flick of the ashes, the cigarette burned down almost to its filter without having been actually smoked once. “You know that people have huge mouths, someone’s going to spill that this happened and Vaike’s going to find out and—“

“The problem here isn’t even yours, but rather _his_? My gods, Sully, do you know who has problems on other people’s behalf?” When she wasn’t given any answer, Maribelle supplied her own: “People who are in love have problems with other people in mind! We’ve gone over this before, if you love him, date him!”

“Hey now, we’re not making this about my romantic pursuits and lack thereof again, been there, done that once and it ended in a great guy having his heart broken by some tramp who’s now currently at my summer camp!” Throwing what was left of the cigarette down and watching as Maribelle stifled what remained of its burn with her foot, Sully reached into the side of the door and pulled an entire pack of the things out, taking another one and setting fire to it to start the process again. “Damn it, if I actually smoked I’d have gone through half a pack by now trying to process all this.”

“Smoking’s a dirty habit, I’m glad you just watch them burn when you’re stressed, but the fact remains that you disliking Lissa being here on someone else’s behalf is beyond silly. Why, you should just accept that she’s here and that he’ll never know or be brought to care, and that’ll be the end of that.” Laughing, Maribelle hoped that her words would incite some change in Sully’s mind, but she had little faith in that happened. However, mention of people knowing and caring about where Lissa, and by extension, herself and the boys, was made her think about the second prong to Olivia’s suggestion she’d made inside, and so she took a step back from the open truck door. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to place a call to my husband so that he knows we’re not dead. Haven’t spoken to him all day.”

Watching as she stepped away, Sully sighed and threw the newly half-burned cigarette onto the ground, jumping down onto it as she tried following Maribelle. “Now, don’t take this like I’m encouraging this behavior you’ve got going on, but you haven’t been here long enough to make it seem like you made it back to Ylisstol. That’s a several hour drive from here, and even accounting for how long you had to go off the right path, you’d still be on the road right now.” She had Maribelle stop where she stood, turning back to see who was spouting the advice, and when she saw the smile on the blonde’s lips she knew she was being helpful somehow. “Call him once you’d have actually made it, he’ll be less suspicious that way.”

“I didn’t think of it like that, thanks!” Giving two thumbs up in approval at the plan, Maribelle went and grabbed her purse out of her car and, after making sure to get her keys from her pants pocket and place them safely inside the same pocket her phone had been it, extracted her phone to see that she had gotten a couple of recent calls, all from her husband’s number. “It seems they’ve made it to Plegia, although if I’m not supposed to be seeing this then we’ll just…keep my phone on its auto-reject mode until I’d realistically be home.”

“That’s a smart idea. Can’t let him get suspicious that you’d be partaking in risky driving behaviors with your children in the car.” The whole idea of aiding Maribelle in this cover-up of what she was doing did not seem right to Sully, but she wasn’t going to cause more problems by trying to fight it any longer. She’d come to terms with the fact that she was going to have an unwanted guest overnight, and now she was starting to move past why she was having problems with that, there wasn’t any reason to bring it all up again.

Of course, when she went back inside and everyone was trying to pretend that nothing had been wrong, it was incredibly awkward for everyone involved, including the children when they’d finished playing with the horses for the day. There did end up being some nice conversation, a few genuine laughs shared, and when nighttime rolled around there were no problems with assigning people to places to sleep for the night, but was it all worth it to any of them? Most likely not.

Especially not since Maribelle never once returned a single one of her husband’s calls, not checking again to see if he was trying to contact her, until she was using her phone the next morning to make an important call of a different kind…

* * *

When morning rolled around, Robin was awoken not by an alarm clock or another bout of his inability to stay asleep, but instead the rapid knocking on some wall in the room he’d fallen asleep in. “Hu—what’s going on?” he asked as he snapped to attention, looking around the living room of his house trying to find the source of the noise. “Whatever it is, it was most likely my wacky sleep schedule that’s to blame.”

“I was just checking to make sure you were going to wake up,” his wife Sumia replied, her standing at the hallway entrance still in her pajamas. “You got home rather late last night and didn’t bother coming into the bedroom once, which worried me.” He looked down at himself and saw that he was still wearing his uniform from work, a sure sign that her story was completely true. “I thought you might have been shot on the job last night, or something worse, and it began to eat at me.”

“No, ha, I guess I was just tired enough to come home and fall asleep on the couch.” He stretched, his neck and shoulders sore from what was undoubtedly a horrible sleeping location. “Why’re you waking me up so early? Something else wrong?”

She scuffed her foot along the carpet for a moment, thinking about how to say what she felt needed to be said. “I got a call just a few minutes ago, from Maribelle. She says that her boys aren’t feeling so well today and that they’re not going to be able to honor the playdate that was arranged. She offered to make up for it tomorrow, which I told her was fine.” Walking to be by her husband’s side as he stood up to continue stretching, Sumia grabbed him into a hug at the first chance she got. “I assumed you would want to know that before you tried rounding them up to go before you headed to work later.”

“Work, please don’t remind me that I have to go back in today too!” Smacking himself on the head while still wrapped in his wife’s hug, Robin gave a heartfelt chuckle at his own situation. “I never thought I’d say this, but I don’t envy Chrom for his position at all. He’s got a lot on his plate, doing what he does every day, and they’re mighty big shoes to fill when you’re used to working days doing investigation work.”

“It’s only a temporary thing, and when Chrom’s back we can invite him over for a nice dinner while you tell him all the things you did in his place.” Pausing for a moment to realize she’d just said what he had, Sumia heard her husband’s chuckle turn less heartfelt and more awkward, and she sighed. “Or, you know, we could go to his place and have Olivia cook for us like we always do. She’s a lovely housewife, even if her out-of-house activities are…less than stellar at times.”

“I happen to respect that she can teach dance classes to all sorts of people, hush.” Breaking from his wife’s hug, Robin playfully smacked her on her arm for her comment. “And it’s never been confirmed if she teaches _those_ kinds of classes, we’ve all just assumed she’s taught a handful of them.”

“There should be something against letting a woman who knows how to pole dance be a housewife,” Sumia stated, sighing again. “But you’re right, we don’t know if she’s actually done that or not. Doesn’t mean she hasn’t.”

Robin smacked her again, still as playful as before. “Come on now, no talking bad about my boss’ wife, she’s a lovely lady and cooks enough food to feed an army when we visit. Besides, this wasn’t about her, it was about Chrom and his job and how I’m wary at best about knowing if I can actually do it this whole week.” He shook his head at the thought of having to pull more of the strangely-timed shifts he’d just had to participate in. “Why did I have to consider seeing certain Plegians worse than having to work like this?”

“Because you wanted to be sure to stay loyal to me, that’s why.” Replying with a small smile, Sumia leaned in and kissed Robin’s cheek, him pushing her away. “Oh, stop it, you know that’s a joke. She was a real creep, sure, but why would either of those officers be there? Their commander, your _father_ , probably did away with them after what they did here.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Seen plenty of letters from one of them addressed to someone we know fairly well, at any rate he’s still alive.” Never once had Robin really thought about those letters before that moment, and when his tire mind pieced together the moment in time Sumia was referencing to the presence of those sometimes-aggressive letters, he groaned. “Gods damn it all, Sumia, I just realized why we get those letters on occasion.”

“Why it is, I don’t think I want to hear it,” she said, taking him by the hand and pulling him towards the hall. “Let’s just go back to bed, it’s still early enough that we have a few hours before the girls will be up, and you could use some more sleep before working again tonight.”

“You know what, I think you’re right on that one,” Robin agreed, following his wife’s lead. But before he crawled into bed alongside her, he did run back out to the living room to grab his phone, sending a message to one of his fellow officers to let him know of a particularly interesting development or two he’d discovered in that little bit of time he’d been awake. If anything, when that news was seen the recipient would at least get a small laugh from it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and so we've now seen the story on all 3 possible sides. where else to go from here but down?


	3. Back and Forth Secrets

That recipient in particular was Frederick, and he had been awake for what felt like hours when he got the message from Robin, hoping that it was his wife finally getting back to him and sorely disappointed when it wasn’t. “Well, at least I know that Henry’s been sending the letters to the right address,” he told himself as he read through the message, “but the boys being sick? Maribelle would have told me if that were the case, she becomes a wreck when either one of them is unwell…”

“Are you speaking to yourself in there, Frederick?” Hearing Chrom’s voice caught him by surprise, as he’d figured he was the only one awake, and when he didn’t answer the police chief came to the entryway separating the bedroom off from the rest of the hotel room, brushing a couple of wrinkles from his shirt sleeve. “I wasn’t expecting you to be awake right now. Being away from your family bothering you that much?”

“Not just that, sir,” he replied, slipping into a formal conversation pattern that made Chrom laugh, “but the fact that Maribelle hasn’t tried contacting me once since we left, yet she’s had the courtesy to tell Robin and Sumia that the boys are unwell. While I understand why she let them know that, isn’t it odd that she hasn’t attempted to tell me anything?”

Chrom, stopping his laughter as he realized that his friend was most likely not in the mood to joke around, gave a cough to calm himself and then answered. “Yes, I do see why that’s quite odd, knowing how Maribelle typically tries to tell you everything that she can. Have you tried calling her today?”

“First thing after waking up, yes. Her phone automatically rejected my call, which was to be expected yesterday when she was driving, but twelve hours after getting home? Something’s wrong here and I wish I knew what it was.” Tracing over part of the sheets on the bed with his finger, Frederick sighed, looking over at Chrom. “Have you made contact with Olivia since we got here?”

“Haven’t tried, I don’t want to risk her having no phone service while she’s up at that horse camp her and the kids are spending the week at.” It took a second for Chrom to realize what he’d just said, and when it dawned on him _why_ he knew his wife would have phone service he held up one finger to let Frederick know he would be right back, running back to his bedside to grab his phone and immediately dial Olivia’s phone number, coming to the entryway with his phone pressed against his ear. “She should get this call, why wouldn’t she have service? If others have had it, why wouldn’t she?”

He hadn’t considered any sort of time difference between where they were in Plegia and where the horse camp was, so when the other end of the phone connected and he heard a horse whinnying in the background, he was initially confused as to what Olivia was doing anywhere near a horse. “Hello, Chrom,” she said into the receiver, bringing a smile to his face as he heard her, one that quickly faded as she continued speaking with, “why are you calling me right now?”

“Frederick had brought it to my attention that I hadn’t called you since arriving here, and I figured that I should get around to doing that.” He was back to laughing, her chiming in on her side of the call. “But, don’t want to interrupt you from whatever it is that you’re doing up there, I’m sure it’s a real blast. The kids enjoying it?”

“T-they are!” she stammered, before covering her phone to block out something that she was yelling to someone else around her. When she uncovered it, she sounded like she was more relaxed, something she quickly gave attribution to. “They’re finally figuring out how to ride without going too fast or needing someone on horseback with them. I think poor Sully has had to spend more time babying them up on the horses than she has been able to properly show them to ride.”

“She’ll get used to doing that, if she’s serious about running that camp for those old folks that own it. Not every kid’s going to go up there riding like a champ. Now, which one of them was it that you were yelling at, I couldn’t hear the details but—Olivia?” In the middle of asking his question, she seemed to have hung up on him, leaving him without any idea of who the recipient of her raised voice had been.

Seeing Chrom have such luck with getting ahold of his wife made Frederick wish that he could have done the same, but he figured that if he were to try again right then, he would reach the same dead end he’d gotten to every attempt before that. However, it did give him an idea that he only came up with thanks to Chrom’s presence. “Do you think, perhaps, we could call Lissa and get through to her?” he asked, still tracing the pattern on the sheets to distract his mind from any negativity.

“We could, but I’m sure she’s talking away to Lon’ qu right now. Wouldn’t be able to get through on her end if that’s the case.” Chrom was looking at his phone in disbelief that his wife had hung up on him like she had, but he didn’t say anything about it, only pushing it down into his pants pocket and patting where it rested. “We’ll see if we see him while we’re at breakfast, ask him if he’s heard from her then. If he has, great! We know she and Maribelle are alive and your wife’s just forgotten to change her phone’s settings. If he hasn’t, then we begin to worry.”

Watching as Chrom began to make foot motions towards the hotel room’s door, Frederick stood up and straightened out his pants, having gotten dressed long before he’d known anyone else was awake. “If you’re making a suggestion to head down now and see what we can find out, I would be okay with that. Could always use a good meal before what is undoubtedly going to be a long day.”

“Don’t make it sound like it’s going to be a bad day, even if it’s long.” Waiting until his friend was standing beside him to make any actual movements out of the room, Chrom stopped mere steps in front of the door, turning back to look at the bed of the third person of their group. From the angle they were at, it was impossible to tell if Vaike was awake or asleep, and judging by how he hadn’t said a single thing or made a single noise in the time they’d been talking, asleep was the best guess. “Oh well, for the best if he’s not there making things awkward between Lon’qu and the rest of us,” he admitted, reaching for the doorknob. “I don’t know if I could handle them fighting every chance they had.”

“If we see him coming to breakfast, we’ll have to make sure to put an end to any and all conversations we might have going with Lon’qu then, most definitely.” Frederick brought an arm around Chrom, as if he was trying to give him a supportive hug in their decision, but he was quickly pushed off as Chrom had to step back to keep from hitting himself with the heavy room door.

Once the latch on the door had clicked and the two men were heading down the hall, Vaike chose to sit up, revealing that he’d been awake to listen in on the entirety of their discussion. “Would ya look at that, they’re thinkin’ I’m gonna go down there and cause a scene with that woman-stealin’ bastard, huh?” he asked himself, shaking his head as he did. “As if the Vaike’ll stoop down that low t’do that. There’s much more important things t’be happenin’ right now, pretty sure, and I can’t be lettin’ him distract me like they think he will. Yesterday was one time, ain’t happenin’ again. Not on my watch.”

That didn’t stop him from taking far too long to get ready to follow everyone else down, musing to himself about what kinds of things he wouldn’t do if he came face-to-face with Lon’qu again. By the time he was finally dressed and ready to go, nearly an hour had passed since the other two had left and he wasn’t even sure if they’d still be down in the breakfast area or if they’d have moved on to actual conference events; when they had gone it was already nearing the end of meal time, so it was completely reasonable for him to assume that he _might_ be late to something important. He, by some luck, wasn’t late to anything, the other two plus the Feroxi officer sitting down in the lobby having some intense conversation when he came down, but just the sight of Lon’qu was making him mentally go back on some of those “wouldn’t do” things he’d thought of.

“Ah, it’s about time you joined us,” Chrom said when he saw Vaike approaching, silencing the other two men with a hand gesture. “We were beginning to wonder if you had decided you were just going to stay up there all day or not.”

“I was doin’ some hard thinkin’ ‘bout some things, that’s all,” he explained, leaning up against the wall right beside the corner the others were sitting in. “Like ‘bout how, in order to look like I belong here with you guys, ol’ Vaike’s gotta shape up his behavior when it comes to,” he glanced at Lon’qu, who was looking back at him with a stern expression, “certain others.”

Ignoring the shared look between the two men, Chrom smiled. “That’s good to hear, we’ve already been approached by several other delegations asking where our third-in-command is, expecting to hear me speak about Robin when I say where. You’ve got a large role to fill here at this conference, with all these people expecting him and not getting him.”

“Oh, y’mean like that girl from yesterday! Oh, what was her name…gah, can’t remember it.” It was on the tip of his tongue, but all Vaike could remember about the person in question was how she’d known his name before they’d spoken. “She was a real creep towards me ‘bout good ol’ Robin, gettin' mad that I’d replaced him or whatever. Ain’t like it was my idea.”

“Yeah, people like her…” His voice trailing off as he tried to forget about anyone else who might have said anything about Robin and his whereabouts, Chrom motioned towards the empty chair next to his own. “Now come on, join in with the rest of us and sit down! No need for you to be standing around, you know.”

Vaike shook his head, still trying to keep eye contact with Lon’qu even though the other man had no interest in doing the same. “I’ll pass on that, thanks though. Say, what was goin’ on this mornin’ before ya left the room? Somethin’ ‘bout people not answerin’ calls and whatnot? Care t’share any ‘a that?”

“That’s not exactly anything you should worry with, Vaike,” Chrom told him, still aggressively motioning towards the empty seat. “Besides, it’s not proper to spy on other people’s conversation when you’re supposed to be asleep.”

“Hey now, Chrom, this man knows a lot about women not replying to his calls, maybe him knowing what’s going on would be for the best.” Vaike would have preferred had it been Chrom explaining everything to him, but Frederick at least was willing to do it and so he spent the next several minutes talking about the lack of contact that had been made, as well as the call that _had_ apparently happened. The entire time Frederick was speaking, Vaike was still trying to look at Lon’qu, watching as the other man shifted uncomfortably where he sat, something that it seemed no one else was noticing.

When Frederick took in a deep, sorrowful breath to finish up his story, that was when Vaike chose to cut in with, “Hold on a sec, why’s the life-ruiner over here twitchin’ like he’s got somethin’ to hide right now? Ain’t anyone gonna point this out?”

“…Vaike, you are aware that we _all_ know he’s not exactly comfortable right now, due to exactly what we’re telling you about, right?” Chrom, still cutting Frederick off before he could finish his story, stopped pointing at the spot next to himself to instead start pointing over at Lon’qu, trying to be as respectful as possible about it. “While you don’t know why that is, and gods help the person who tells you, I still need you to respect that he has just as much reason to care in all of this as Frederick and myself do, and we…we don’t need you giving him problems because of it.”

“I would appreciate it if I could finish speaking before you move on to dealing with his observations, thank you.” Taking in another deep breath, Frederick proceeded to finish off his story as quickly as he could, but based on how the other three people were more focused on each other than any word he was saying, he rushed the ending to let them have at it.

He happened to make the mistake of mentioning that Lon’qu was worried about “his poor Lissa”, and that was what set Vaike off into an angered rage. “I ain’t listenin’ t’this, not if you’re gonna be coddlin’ some woman-snatchin’ man who took my woman and never looked back from it. That’s not what the Vaike agreed to when he said he’d come on this trip.”

“I did not take her from you, you have had enough time to get over the fact that she chose to spend her life with me rather than you. I understand that simple-minded men such as yourself might have a difficult time grasping that concept, but I will not take listening to you act like you did nothing wrong when, clearly, Lissa was unhappy with you and wanted a change.” Lon’qu turned to face away from Vaike, something the blond did not appreciate even slightly. “You must get over yourself and accept that she moved on.”

“The only thing I’m acceptin’ right here, right now, is you gettin' far away from here, ‘cause I don’t wanna have t’deal with ya any longer!” His every word punctuated with a hand movement that was basically rubbing his thumb over his closed fist, Vaike proceeded to lunge at Lon’qu, forgetting that he was surrounded by not just friends but trained and experienced police officers who were going to stop any altercation before it could start. Even with Chrom and Frederick both jumping in to restrain him from what he was trying to do, he still managed to get one swing in at the other man—something Lon’qu expected and was able to call by grabbing Vaike’s fist before it could get anywhere close to hitting him.

“Watching you behave like this in my presence only reinforces what Lissa told me about you, you pathetic excuse of a man-child,” Lon’qu coldly stated, squeezing his hand down on Vaike’s as he stood up. “There were times that I doubted if what she had done was right, and if what I had done to assist her had been even slightly appropriate, but then I see this and…no, she was correct in assuming you were unfit for doing anything more than living your day-to-day life.”

Still seething and not enjoying being held back by two people while his hand was being death gripped by a third, Vaike was on the verge of blinking back tears in his anger as he replied, “And what’s that s’posed to mean, asshole? Gonna bother explainin’ that for me, or are ya just gonna assume the Vaike ain’t smart enough t’get it if ya do?”

“I have no reason to explain anything to someone who just attempted to assault me, in a hotel lobby filled with police officers and officials from all over.” Lon’qu let go of the hand he was holding, finally remaking eye contact with the man so angry with him, giving the straightest face he could manage in such an absurd situation. “However, if it will give you some peace of mind, perhaps I should.”

“Lon’qu, this is no time to be baiting him,” Chrom warned, tightening his hold a bit in case that statement wasn’t taken well. “Either tell him or one of us will. It’s not the greatest opportunity or situation for this, but it needs to be done to—“ He was brought to silence by the sound of a phone ringing, immediately having to take on the brunt of holding Vaike back because Frederick completely let go to check the call he was receiving.

There was a matter of seconds between him answering his phone and him dropping it onto the floor, it hitting on its back but the screen going black as it connected with the ground. “That was Robin again,” he explained, a hint of panic in his voice as he bent down to retrieve his phone and attempt to get it working again, “and it seems that there’s more to this all than what we’ve suspected. They don’t seem to have made it to Ylisstol. At all.”

Between Chrom pulling back to cover his mouth with one hand and Lon’qu wordlessly storming away, Vaike was left to wonder what was going on to have people just somehow not come home, despite him not really caring what happened to them; but when his own phone started buzzing in his pocket, he had no idea that he was just about to be as involved in the situation as the rest of them. “I don’t know what you’re doing, or who’s around you right now,” the brash voice that was waiting for him on the other side said when he answered, not caring that Chrom and Frederick both were right there, “but there is a huge pain in my neck right now and that pain is your ex-girlfriend, and I need you to tell me what I can do to get rid of her.”

He didn’t drop his phone in shock at the news, nor did he say anything out loud. All Vaike could bring himself to do in that moment, with two people present that would jump to hear what he’d just heard, was to give a small nod and say, “Can’t really help ya with that, Sully. That ain’t my problem,” before hanging up and avoiding all questions about what he’d been told. All he would say was that he didn’t want to talk or think about it, even though he knew just enough to know where those ladies actually were. How long he’d be the only one to know that, though, was a mystery.

* * *

The sound of someone walking around in the cabin shouldn’t have been enough to wake Sully up. She’d been used to Olivia coming inside and starting work on making her children breakfast the past few mornings, but Olivia was a quiet woman and did her best to keep her disruptions down to a minimum. The person out there presently was loud, with forceful footsteps that made the floor creak in ways Sully hadn’t heard before, and whatever it was they were doing out there, they were being disrespectful by doing it. Without caring if she was properly dressed (any rude person could deal with seeing a confident woman who slept in nothing more than a t-shirt and her underwear), she rolled out of the bed there in the cabin’s lone bedroom and made a straight line for the door.

Whoever was out there was going to get an earful from her about their behavior, and she had a real hunch as to who it was. But when she got to the door and heard the water in the bathroom next door on full blast, someone else deciding to take an early morning shower without considering who might still have been asleep, a completely faked smile came to her face. “These ladies, coming here and thinking I’m going to put up with this behavior? What the hell kind of fool are they taking me as?” she asked herself, before opening the door and coming out into the main room of the cabin. Her plan had been to start yelling at who she found out there, but when Maribelle saw her, the blonde’s first reaction was to hold a hand out, telling Sully to stop whatever she was doing, before bringing a single finger to her lips.

“I know, this is hard for me to come to you about,” she said, not breaking away from looking at Sully as she continued on with her phone conversation, “but the boys are feeling completely unwell and we don’t need to spread that to your lovely girls. We’ll have to reschedule for tomorrow, is that okay?” Whatever the other person said, it was enough to make Maribelle’s eyes light up a bit, and after she exchanged farewells with the person she hung up her phone and set it on the counter. “I’m so sorry, I had to get somewhere children and horses were not and this was the first place I could think of.”

“Would it have killed you to have been a bit quieter? It’s not like it’s a new concept, being quiet when it’s this early in the morning,” Sully replied, losing all interest in giving Maribelle the angered response she’d been planning on. “But whatever, sounds like you had an interesting night out there in the bunks. Kids got sick from something?”

“Ha, I wish that was the truth but…” Maribelle bit down on her lip, looking towards the closed bathroom door. “Let’s just say that a certain someone had a bit of a revelation last night and now refuses to go anywhere today.” She was bracing herself for the negative reaction that was going to garner, but when all she got was a confused look in response she had to elaborate. “Last night, after we’d tucked in the children and moved to just the three of us adults talking out in the campers’ bunks, Lissa made the decision that she didn’t want to continue heading home today after all. Said that she wasn’t going to willingly sit in a car that long again today after all the driving yesterday.”

One of her eyes twitching a bit from the news, but completely expecting it nonetheless, Sully too looked towards the closed bathroom door where the sounds of the shower running could be heard. “And let me guess,” she started after shaking her head and looking back towards Maribelle, “no matter how much you tried, she wasn’t going to change her mind. Typical woman, wanting what she wants and not giving a damn about what anyone else says.”

“I honestly don’t blame her for the decision, I just wish she hadn’t made it and we’d kept to the schedule I’d set.” That was when Maribelle motioned towards her phone, bringing up the phone call she’d just had. “I had to call dear, sweet Sumia and come up with some lie to keep her or Robin from going to the house and seeing we’re not there, but I couldn’t just toss aside the plans completely, you know? Now we have to make sure we’re on the road tomorrow to get back in time for the boys to make their playdate, and if Lissa’s being so stubborn today, who’s to say she won’t be the same tomorrow?”

“You might just have to force her,” Sully said, not quite understanding why being forceful wasn’t a concept Maribelle had accepted in this situation, “and if that doesn’t work, I’ll force her for you. I said she could stay last night, not multiple nights. Who the hell does she think I am, some kind-hearted person who cares about how she feels?”

“I think she thinks you’re understanding enough to see that she’s pregnant and that she might need to go about things a bit differently.” Maribelle’s eyes were shifting to the ground as she spoke, her gaze wandering as her voice dropped in volume. “Or maybe she thinks that you’re as easy to walk over as a certain friend of yours that she used to love is. You two are forever intertwined in her mind, you know.”

Mentioning that, even in the vague terms she’d chosen for the job, was enough to get Sully fired up once more, her head rapidly shaking as if it was going to brush off the reminder. “No way, just because we got trapped up here that one time doesn’t mean a damn thing about anything. We never moved past friends, and just because he was a pushover wrapped around her finger doesn’t mean I’m planning on being the same way. She’s leaving today, that’s the end of that.”

“I think you need to reconsider those words,” a new voice said as the proper front door to the cabin opened, Olivia walking inside with a shy, genuine smile on her face. “If it were either me or Maribelle in that situation, you wouldn’t force us to leave, so why Lissa? Why are you going to hold on to things from the past to use against her in a time of need?”

“H-how long were you listening to us?” When she answered that she hadn’t been outside long, only listening through having cracked the door open to check to see if anyone had been inside, Sully internally gave a sigh of relief, although on the outside she was still fired up about the topic at hand. “Okay, whatever, point here is that she’s given me zero reasons to ever care about anything happening with her. Remember, I don’t know her all that well, not like I’ve known the two of you, my only real experience with her involved a sad sack of a man sitting in this chair, right here,” she motioned towards the lone chair sitting against the wall in the living room, “moping for days about how she wasn’t replying to his calls.”

“That sounds like you’re using Vaike as a means to dislike Lissa, and I don’t think that’s right to be doing.” Her smile growing sweeter, Olivia looked to Sully and saw that the redhead didn’t seem to be accepting that response. “It would be like, hm…I don’t know of a perfectly suitable situation to compare this to, but the one that comes to mind would be if I were to hate a someone we all know for his wife liking Chrom.”

“And that sounds like you think I’m disliking her because of their old romance thing for some personal reason on my end, which is as far from the truth as it gets.” She was not enjoying this conversation, not when it was getting made to seem that she was in the wrong for disliking someone who had made a past experience of hers so bad, but there was no easy way out of this for Sully and she knew it. “But again, the point is that I don’t have any reason to care about her, or for her, or anything. That means I don’t give a damn if she wants to stay to defy Maribelle or whatever, I just want her out.”

“You can be the one to tell her that when she’s done showering then, I suppose,” Maribelle said with a straight face, knowing that the outcome of that conversation would be no different than the one she’d had with Lissa beforehand. “I’ll be sure to pop some popcorn and watch the fireworks as they explode.”

“I’ll assist with making the popcorn, for sure,” Olivia added, taking her place in front of the small array of kitchen appliances there in the cabin. “But first, I need to get breakfast started for my children before they tire themselves out with another day of riding horses. Would you care to help me with this, Maribelle?”

“I sure would.” Giving one last look at Sully before turning her attention to the new task at hand, Maribelle shook her head and, as she turned towards where Olivia was pulling bowls out of cabinets, she rolled her eyes. “I just don’t know how someone could be so delusional as to think they’ll be able to talk sense into my best friend better than I could.”

Had Sully heard that comment, she would most likely have given some response about how she could do the physical intimidation thing, but she had already moved on to pacing through the cabin’s main room (much like Maribelle had been before, she hated to admit), trying to come up with a way to approach what she’d just roped herself into. She knew that she could easily threaten to get Lissa into the car herself, but something about that didn’t feel right to her, especially with her being a police officer and whatnot. She wouldn’t manhandle someone she wasn’t arresting, so why would she manhandle someone who was just a stubborn and boneheaded pregnant woman?

Thinking about someone being simultaneously stubborn and boneheaded made her think about a certain person that only got brought up far too often for her liking, and despite her best wishes she knew that her face was picking up color at thinking about him on her own. She would never admit it to anyone, just like she wouldn’t have admitted to them back in the past and she wouldn’t ever do it in the future, but when they talked about how this whole dislike of Lissa came from her feelings towards Vaike, it wasn’t a complete lie. While by no means was she interested in him or attracted to him, that color creeping into her cheeks be damned, she did consider him one of her closest friends, if not the closest. He was the one she always went to when she needed a ride with the potential of off-roading, a change that had been made after their week-long cabin adventure three and a half years before. Hell, he’d lent her his truck for her stay up at the cabin this time!

If that wasn’t friendship, she didn’t know what was and she’d rather not know. Although, she was pretty sure that friendship shouldn’t have made people blush when they thought about their friends, but that was a minor detail she wasn’t going to linger on because there was something much more important to be dealing with at the moment, that being how to convince that unwanted guest to leave. As she was pacing, she was listening to everything going on in the cabin around her, from the water in the shower still running to the two ladies preparing breakfast for their children, and with those noises as a backdrop to her thoughts she set off on a journey to come up with the best plan possible.

All that she managed to do was trip over her own foot as she was trying to turn in the middle of her pacing, completely making her forget whatever plan she’d been concocting at that moment when she realized that she was still pantsless. How was she going to potentially intimidate someone into getting out of her cabin when she wasn’t wearing pants? Lissa would take one look at her in all her glory and laugh until she cried, most likely, and even though Sully’s thighs were a wonder to look at they weren’t what was needed there in that moment. Some pants were necessary for this to work to perfection.

When she stepped back into the bedroom to get properly dressed, the scene was exactly as it had been as she was pacing; when she came back out not even a minute later, the kitchen area was empty, two empty bowls sitting on the counter with no other sign of the ladies who had been prepping a meal. The water in the shower had also turned off, and while that meant the cabin itself was oddly silent, it also meant that the moment Lissa said something to herself there in that bathroom, Sully was able to hear it: “I don’t know _what_ Maribelle was thinking by stopping here last night, but she’s going to pay for it.”

The concept of making Maribelle pay for something made Sully begin to rethink any plan she might have started coming up with. Yes, she did have reason for wanting Lissa out of the cabin and far, far away from the camp, but if Lissa was considering her act of stubbornness as a way to make Maribelle pay, maybe that was something she should consider for herself as well. There were a lot of times that she’d been over to Maribelle’s house for various work-related reasons, always spending meals where she’d tried to get conversations going with Frederick but ending up getting talked over by a blonde housewife who felt her days were infinitely more interesting than police topics, and what better way to give her retribution for that than to side with the friend of hers she didn’t like?

Alas, that required actually siding and pretending to get along with Lissa for at least a little bit, but to see Maribelle sputter and freak out at the notion of it was too good of an idea to pass up. It would be painful, knowing where her personal friendships rested, but Sully was always down for making someone regret decisions they’d made, even though that normally resulted in moving around someone’s office or hiding their police badges. This was going to be uncharted territory for her, and she was only slightly excited for it.

Only slightly, of course, because she knew there would be some fallout from this that she could have done without. But the fallout would always and forever be worth the inevitable look of disdain and pain on Maribelle’s face when she realized that she’d been sided against after all. While Sully was beginning to get more on board with her own idea, she’d barely noticed the door to the bathroom open, the only indication that it had being that the room was a bit steamier than it had been moments before.

“Oh, uh, I didn’t think you’d be awake or even in here,” a sheepish Lissa said, hiding her face behind the dirty clothes she’d changed out of. “I mean, I should’ve figured you would be, but I guess I didn’t think about it too much and now you’re…here. Watching me.”

“Sorry, I’ll try not to watch you,” Sully replied, having realized that she’d started staring at Lissa the moment she had come out. “It’s just that, I heard you’d reconsidered leaving today like you were supposed to, and shouldn’t you have, I don’t know, asked the kind-hearted person who’s running this place if that was okay before you did it?”

Snorting at the modifier that had been used, Lissa dropped her clothes a bit to uncover her face. “Yeah, no, I should have thought about this yesterday before Maribelle said we’d be leaving today. Why’d I think that I’d be fine with getting a few hours out of the car, and only a few hours? That drive yesterday wasn’t fun at all, I’m going to need some serious down time before I do anything like it again.”

“Serious down time like, what? A day? Two days?” She got a shrug in response, an answer that Sully was not wanting to see, even if it did start the wheels turning in her mind about how to flip this to work with her plan. “Okay, so you don’t know how long you’re going to want to wait before you’re willing to leave again. No big deal. Still should’ve asked me before you made that decision, but we’ll roll with it.”

“I kind of don’t ever want to ask you anything after how rude you’ve been about me being here, but you’re totally right. And, um, totally okay with us crashing here for a bit longer than originally decided?” Lissa was still sounding and looking sheepish, going as far as to hang her head a bit to try and earn herself some sympathy points.

It wasn’t the obvious attempt to get sympathy that made Sully reconsider things, but rather her already concocting her plan to make Maribelle pay, but she ended up giving Lissa a small, almost unnoticeable nod. “I guess I can deal with it, as long as you’re willing to play by my rules and the camp rules, and you’re fine with us heading out tomorrow night for a promised dinner in the closest town to here. Not even inviting you to that one, don’t ask to be allowed because it’s not happening.”

“I won’t bother asking, don’t worry. All I can see myself doing tomorrow is sitting around and relaxing a bit before probably getting back to heading to Ylisstol the following day.” Her face brightening back up, Lissa was grinning in Sully’s direction, her eyes giving wordless thanks. “You’re so great, and when Maribelle finds out that—“

“Hey now, let’s not get irrational with this. Maribelle doesn’t find out a damn thing about our agreement.” Miming zipping her lips shut, Sully watched as all that excitement and joy that had been flooding into Lissa’s face fell right away, the blonde going from being happy to upset in a split second. “Yes, I’m more than aware she’s your best friend. Trust me, I’ve been dealt some horrible things because of that standing. But think of this as a little payback for her forcing you up here, now you get to make her stay. Bet’cha those boys of hers will love being here for as long as you want to be.”

“Maybe you’re right…” Her voice was thoughtful, showing just how much Lissa was taking Sully’s idea into consideration. “I mean, they didn’t talk much at all on the ride here, but I bet those poor boys were all about talking about horses between dropping their dad off at their airport and getting me.” Something in her sentence distracted her completely, the next thought that made its way into words being, “Oh my gods, Frederick has no idea they’re here! He has no idea that any of us are here! He doesn’t know, and that means that no one knows! Staying here really messes up that secret, doesn’t it?”

Sully threw her arms up in a shrug, laughing as she did. “And don’t you think that Maribelle would just love to be caught lying about where she is and everything? That woman’s never seen a lick of punishment in her life and she’ll be given so much hell for what she’s done, coming here without telling a single soul. I love it.”

“You’re devious and crazy, and I don’t see anything wrong with making Maribelle suffer a little bit. After all, she’s the one who chose to bring me here, not my problem what happens once we’re here.” The smile was back on Lissa’s face, as she turned to head towards the door outside. “I’m going to head back to the room we stayed in last night, act like nothing happened in here between us, you know how it goes.” She gave a small wave as she headed out, Sully watching as she took her overdramatic steps and nearly tripped over nothing as she went through the door.

That was enough to elicit a small chuckle from her, but once the door was closed and she was in the cabin by herself, she was breaking down into loud laughs that coursed through her whole body. “That was too easy,” she managed to get out, her words being broken up by her laughter. “How’d I never think to do anything like that before this? Woman’s insufferable but at least she’s as down for making her friend pay as I am. Oh boy, I bet…” Her words caught in her throat alongside her laughter before she said them, the gravity of what she’d just done sinking in. “…I bet someone out there would get a laugh from this too.”

The someone in particular that she was thinking of wouldn’t think anything about this was funny at all, and would most likely be hurt that she was interacting with these people behind his back, but caring about that would just prove the point that she considered his opinion to be important. If there was one thing, one thing at all, about Sully that she’d like to preserve no matter what, it was her lack of reliance on any man; worrying about a man’s opinion on what she considered a good time was going directly against that. She resumed laughing about how she’d plotted to do something against Maribelle right under Maribelle’s nose and without her picking up on a thing, but the laughter was more subdued this time, perhaps because the situation had lost some of its humor, or possibly because that consideration had been given after all.

No matter what the reason, she had decided on one thing as she laughed there alone: she needed to find someone to tell about this, in some form, and quick. Obviously she could just keep it between her and Lissa, but she didn’t really want to have to interact with Lissa any more than that one conversation they’d just had, and besides, if they did speak again the chances of it just staying on the one topic was slim to none. She knew how women with children worked, it always came back to their kids somehow, and she’d already had to go through enough of that when it was just her and Olivia up there. That woman might have been normally soft-spoken, but when she was alone she could talk for hours on end about how great her children and their achievements were.

The mere thought of having to sit and listen to Lissa find something to talk about regarding the child she very clearly hadn’t even had yet was not one that Sully wanted to entertain for more than the second it took to cast it aside. She was thankful they hadn’t brought it up in what conversation they shared right then, and that was all she was going to think on that particular matter.

Speaking of people and their focus on children, though, it was while she was still recovering from how hilarious the turn of events had been when someone, laden with two kids underneath her arms, came barreling into the cabin. “I need you to teach these boys how to properly ride a horse,” Maribelle demanded, setting the smaller of her kids down on the floor before seating the bigger one on the kitchen counter, grabbing a paper towel and wiping down his face. “We’ve been watching the older kids go around the yard on horseback and they want to do it too.”

“And did the one trip and eat dirt while you were out there, or…?” Having successfully collected herself and stopped her laughter without acting even remotely like she’d been having the time in her life there by herself, Sully raised an eyebrow in the direction of the kid sitting on the counter. “Besides, it’s not like I’ve got horses here that’re small enough for kids their size to ride.”

Unamused, Maribelle replied, “No, Brady didn’t trip and eat dirt, he had dirt thrown in his face, there is a distinct difference there.” With her foot, she motioned towards the other child, who was putting his dirt-caked hands on the wall, leaving prints that Sully cringed to see. “I figured that having them learn to ride would keep them out of trouble, particularly little Freddy and his always-mischievous hands.” That was when she looked to see what her younger son was actually doing, and when she spoke again she’d made the switch from fun-loving mother to stern one in a blink. “Are you leaving a mess on someone’s wall? Are you being naughty, child?”

“Sounds like someone might need to either punish their kid or get the father involved.” It was an off-handed comment, one made because Sully was not looking forward to having to scrub that dirt off the wall (and she knew Maribelle wasn’t going to do it herself), but the death stare she got from it was enough to make her give a solitary laugh at her own words.

“As I’m sure you can assume, I can’t do either of those things at this very moment,” Maribelle said, looking back to Brady as she wiped the last of the dirt off of his face. “I’m not punishing my son while we’re taking a break from reality, and I cannot let his father know we’re taking this very break. Besides, we almost blew our cover outside just a moment ago and I am not risking that happening again if either of these kids is crying and someone happens to get another phone call.”

“Almost blew your cover?” Her eyebrow raising a tick higher, Sully was completely prepared to have to repeat herself to get an answer from Maribelle, but when the door into the cabin from the stables came flying open and Olivia, Lucina, and Inigo all came inside, the two kids looking unhappy to be accompanying their mother, she turned her questioning to the newcomers instead. “What’s this about phone calls and blowing covers?”

“I didn’t think my actions through properly and answered a call from Chrom before I realized that was a bad idea. We made small talk until those kids,” Olivia motioned towards Maribelle’s children, “started making a fuss, and I had to get out of the conversation without so much as a goodbye. He’s most likely suspecting something is amiss here, based on my curt and quick disappearance.”

Grabbing the bridge of her nose and rubbing at it, Sully accepted the news with a deep sigh. “I bet he is, and that’s no fun for any of us. We’re supposed to be here, sure, but the people who aren’t…damn it, I don’t want to get in trouble at work because some people decided to drop in unexpectedly.”

“Chrom won’t punish you for something you didn’t have a say in, although he will punish anyone he rightfully can. Which, uh, isn’t you and it isn’t me either.” It was clear, based on how Olivia was carefully dancing around naming names, that she didn’t want to draw attention to anyone who’d done wrong in front of her children.

However, her children very clearly knew who she was talking about and they were quick to go right out and talk about it. “Yeah, Father won’t punish you, miss Sully, but he’ll be super angry at Aunt Lissa and miss Maribelle when he finds out they’re here,” Inigo bluntly said, earning himself a punch in the arm from his sister. “Ow! Lucina, I’m saying the truth here!”

“You are, but I don’t think you needed to. Mother didn’t say it, you shouldn’t either.” Tilting her head back slightly to stick her nose a bit in the air, Lucina was trying to act like the bigger person in the situation, until Inigo stomped down on her foot and made her yelp in pain, her instant reaction to take another swing at him. They weren’t meaning much by their fighting, but it did get a dirty-handed child overexcited about what was happening, and before they could stop their bickering the kid ran to them and started punching them both with his small fists, leaving dirt imprints on their legs with every hit.

“Ma, lookit what Freddy’s doin’,” Brady said, pushing his mother’s face with his own hand away from focusing on him and to his brother. “He’s bein’ a bad boy again, huh?”

The look of being done with everything that filled Maribelle’s eyes as she watched her younger son beating on the older kids who were fighting amongst themselves like siblings always did was enough to make Sully laugh when she saw it. “Now, now, don’t find my exasperation hilarious, someday you’ll know what this is like and you won’t find it nearly as funny as you do now,” Maribelle said as she put Brady back on the floor and moved her hands to her hips as she waited for the other child to look to her.

“Me? Ever having kids? You’re hilarious, Maribelle, almost as hilarious as watching you be a bad mother is.” She was losing herself in her laughter, unable to form any other words after that because of how hard she was laughing at the mere idea of herself having children. Sully liked horses and being a police officer, she didn’t like kids unless they were actively riding horses or being taken care of by someone else. Maribelle’s suggestion was nothing more than her trying to justify her bad parenting in a way that was incredibly wrong.

“I’m not a bad mother, how dare you say that!” Still not doing anything to stop her child that had gotten himself involved in someone else’s fight, Maribelle glared at Sully for a second before going back to waiting for her younger child to stop fighting and turn to face her, something he wasn’t going to do as long as he was being amused by Inigo and Lucina’s playful fistfight. “There is nothing wrong with letting a child do what makes him happy, as long as he isn’t bothering anyone.”

Something about her statement was laughable to the two kids the child was pestering, as they stopped their little fight amidst trying their hardest not to laugh. “Miss Maribelle, he’s hitting us, that’s kind of bothering us,” Lucina explained, while her brother nodded along with her words. “He’s not hurting anything, and our legs are already dirty from the horses, but it doesn’t make it right.”

“Lucina, don’t talk back to an adult like that,” Olivia cut in, her voice barely above a whisper but just loud enough for everyone to hear she was saying something. “Even if that adult is Maribelle, you still shouldn’t do it.”

“But Mother, she’s letting him hit us and we don’t like it! You and Father always say that if we don’t like what someone’s doing to say it, that’s why you don’t let us play with Cynthia and Morgan anymore, because they kept bullying Inigo.” Puffing her cheeks out at being scolded, Lucina gave her mother an unhappy look until her mother backed off, taking back her words with a quiet apology. “I know we’re supposed to be nice to little kids, but when they’re not nice to us, why should we be?”

“I think we should’ve kicked him.” His voice showing how un-serious he was with the suggestion, Inigo watched as his little comment got him an enraged woman charging towards him, her hand outstretched to grab him by his collar. Maribelle was only stopped by Olivia stepping in front of her to protect her child, and when she realized she wasn’t going to be able to give the older boy a piece of her mind for what she’d heard, she merely picked up the dirty-handed child nearby and carried him to the counter, pushing the entire dispute from her mind. “Ha, thanks Mother, you really saved me on that one.”

Olivia was not pleased to have to had just stepped in, something she made clear to her son by pointing towards the door to the stable. “We’re having a discussion about that behavior right now, Inigo. I cannot allow you to be like that, no matter how deserving the kid might have been at the time.”

As they shuffled outside, Lucina followed them to the door until it was closed in her face, leaving her to sigh and lean against it as her mother and brother had a necessary conversation outside. She turned to watch what else might have been happening there in the cabin, curious about what could go on now that there wasn’t fighting and a kid hitting her and all that, but she saw that the situation inside had calmed down dramatically. Sully wasn’t standing there on the verge of crying from her laughter anymore, having taken a seat on the couch with her legs on the armrest, and Maribelle was hard at work trying to scrub her younger son’s hands clean of the dirt he’d caked onto them. “Man, I wish I could be riding horses right now,” the girl said, sighing again. “That would be fun.”

“Go out and saddle up then, you’re old enough to do it yourself,” Sully told her, not moving an inch from where she’d been seated. “And if you manage to hurt yourself, your mother’s out there and she’ll hear you. She’s a smart woman, she knows what to do if someone’s injured from falling out of a saddle.”

“I don’t want to do it by myself,” Lucina replied, pushing off the door to step closer to the couch. “I want someone to help me, and I don’t have Inigo around to help this time.”

“Have Maribelle do it.” With a handwave in the blonde woman’s direction, Sully was pushing off all responsibility at the moment onto someone who was having a hard enough time getting to clean a child’s hands that she would most likely be unable to help anyone regarding horses. But when that was brought up, she merely repeated her statement, adding, “Or do it yourself, there’s your choices at the moment.”

Still unsatisfied with what she was hearing, Lucina gave a side-eye in Maribelle’s direction before saying, “I think I’ll just not ride horses right now if those are my choices. I think it’s best when you come out and talk to the horses and feed them and then help me get on and riding, but if you don’t want to do that right now, I’ll wait.” With that, she came into the little living area and sat down in the chair against the wall, propping her feet up on the couch’s arm rest right next to Sully’s. “When you get up, I will too.”

“You’re a smart one. Must get that from your mother, because I’ve never seen your father rationalize something quite like that before.” Cracking a smile in the girl’s direction, Sully was satisfied in knowing that the girl wasn’t going to go out and get herself hurt by trying something she wasn’t confident in, even if she would have been happier if Lucina hadn’t come to sit so close to her.

Within moments, however, she was wishing that Lucina had stayed sitting there after all, because once the girl had vacated her seat for the next person coming into the cabin, it was far too late to get said person to not come in and disrupt everything once more. “I really wish those bunks out there weren’t so close together, I just had the single hardest time ever trying to get out of that room because I kept getting myself stuck in between the beds.” Talking loudly, as if she wouldn’t be able to have been heard if she’d kept a normal volume, Lissa came into the room and immediately drew everyone’s attention to her, to the point that she wasn’t even halfway to the chair before Lucina was getting up and stepping away to find somewhere else to sit. “Aw, thanks so much, Lucy! How’d you know I was going to want to sit there?”

“Um, lucky guess?” the girl answered, as she found a somewhat comfortable-looking place in one of the corners, grabbing a decorative pillow to sit on to make it a bit better. “I didn’t think you would want to stand up so I was going to let you sit.”  
“That’s so considerate of you! Me and O— _oh_ my gosh I almost spoiled something for you before I wanted to tell you it!” Covering her mouth and giggling like a child, Lissa turned her attention away from her niece and, after completely ignoring the presence of Sully on the couch right across from her, looked straight over at Maribelle. “Hey, where’s Olivia, Maribelle? I think it’s time I told her and her kiddos the news about the baby’s name, don’t you think?”

“I thought you’d told them already, my dear, but I’m supposing it was just Chrom you told?” When she got a nod in response, Maribelle motioned towards the door out to the stable. “Olivia’s outside dealing with some smart-mouthed behavior Inigo had been taking part in. They should be back inside soon enough, but do you really think this is the best time? Hadn’t you always said that you wanted Lon’qu with you when you told everyone?”

“I might’ve said that a time or two, but something tells me now that if I wait that long, I’ll be telling everyone his name when they’re meeting him!” Giggling once more, that was when Lissa looked back to the couch she was sitting beside and saw Sully looking at her, unimpressed with what she was hearing. “Oh, don’t get jealous, this is going to make you a member of a super-secret elite club of secret-holders for the next few days, doesn’t that make you excited?”

As evidenced by the way the unimpressed look did not fade, it was obvious that it didn’t make Sully excited even marginally. “I’d be more excited if you weren’t here and I was finding this all out secondhand, honestly,” she admitted, “but you’re here and we can’t change that, so, uh,” she forced a smile upon her lips that looked more painful than anything, “I’ll pretend to be excited for you?”

“I guess pretending is better than nothing at all!” Not bothered even slightly at the pained look the smile was giving her companion, Lissa waited until Olivia and Inigo had come back inside (the boy seemed to be upset but his mother was the same as she always was) until she said anything else, the time she waited only drawing out the suspense of what she was going to say for longer. When she got the chance, though, she was quick to speak. “Okay, so back to where I was thinking earlier, I totally forgot that I haven’t told everyone the baby’s name yet and I’ve decided I want to do it now.”

With her kids sharing a look between them that seemed confused at the announcement, Olivia spoke up to voice exactly what they were thinking. “Er, I don’t know if you wanted to find this out this way, but Chrom might have already told us all the news…”

“He did? Aw man, I was really looking forward to saying it.” Poking her lower lip out in the disappointment of the revelation, Lissa faked a few sniffles before she shrugged it off. “Oh well, guess that means I can talk about him by name and not get you all confused by it. I’ve been meaning to try out his name in casual conversation, anyway. Gotta see how it flows off the tongue when talking about him all the time.”

“Or you could just not and let it be something you learn in time. That’s what most normal people do, I would think.” Maribelle’s suggestion wasn’t serious, and for anyone to think so would have been rather odd; everyone there, to some extent, had spent time with her before she’d had kids, and they all knew that she had been quick to rub her kids’ names in people’s faces before there were even tangible children to be seen. “Although, the name you’ve decided on is certainly a…unique moniker for a unique child.”

“It’s only unique because of how we’re spelling it, it’s totally a normal everyday name otherwise.” Giving a quick laugh, Lissa continued to speak despite no one around her really looking invested in what she had to say. “I mean, like, I bet everyone’s met at least one person named O’wain in their lives, right?” There was something to how she pronounced it, a hard emphasis on the first syllable and such a steep drop-off to the rest of the name, that it was clear even in speech that there was something between the two parts of the name. It definitely wasn’t a name anyone’d heard before, and it was definitely unique like Maribelle had said it was.

And Lissa seemed to be so proud of it that she kept talking about it before anyone else could get a word in. “I just really hope that he grows to like his name when he’s older, it’s not got any way to make it cutesy for a little baby boy, but it’s perfect for him ‘cause me and Lon’qu decided on it together and he really liked it because we could make it have that cool apostrophe thing like his name and…oh gods I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

“You were a little bit, and rightfully so. A child’s name is something wonderful to be passionate about, even if it’s an interesting name like that one is.” Maribelle was feigning interest in the name, something obvious to everyone else who was present, including all the children old enough to understand what was being said, aside from the very person she was talking to.

“It’s super interesting, yeah! Sounds like a real hero’s name, which is totally what he’s going to be when he grows up! Aw, I’m getting all excited about getting to meet my precious little O’wain all over again!” Lissa was beginning to wrap her arms around her stomach, gleefully hugging herself as she squealed more and more about her excitement, making sure to mention the poor kid’s name several more times.

It was something that, upon watching it, made Sully really wish that she hadn’t changed her mind on letting Lissa stay there after all. Was getting back at Maribelle really worth having to put up with this annoying mother-to-be for a second longer than necessary? Even if it wasn’t, she didn’t have much of a choice in the matter because she’d already said that she could stay longer than initially discussed, and that meant that she’d need to come up with some way to get over the fact that she was there.

The idea didn’t come until a little bit later, after everyone had dispersed from the main cabin, and Sully was sitting in one of the stalls in the stable, brushing one of the horses’ tails to get all the hay out of it that certain small children had been throwing around. She wasn’t normally one to enjoy this kind of busywork, but she needed the break and the horse needed the care. Her phone was sitting against the shelf that had previously been holding the brush she was now using, and after glancing at it one too many times another arguably bad idea came to her mind. What was stopping her from being the one to tell everyone about the location of these ladies?

She had a variety of people she could have called right then, but the one she chose was ultimately done because she figured he would be the least likely to make a big deal out of what she had to say. Either that, or he would become completely distraught at the mere mention of one of the ladies, but she was really banking on the “not a big deal” part. The call was innocent and short; she got through to him long enough to say that his ex-girlfriend was being a pain in her neck and that she needed to know what to do about her. Vaike’s answer was one that showed he got what she was saying, but that he didn’t want to get involved, and when he hung up on her there was a slight feeling of pride beginning to overtake her. She’d told someone a vague interpretation of the truth, and now they had to live with it as long as she did. The one problem there? It wasn’t just her who’d just told one of the men in Plegia that the ladies were anywhere but home.


	4. Round and Around Roundabout

“I don’t think I’m quite understanding what you’re getting at with this one, Frederick? You’re telling me that they weren’t home _right then_. By all means, and trust me, knowing your wife and my sister, this is quite possible, they’re just out shopping and dragging your sick kids out for an afternoon they don’t want.” Chrom, with his arms crossed over his chest and a stern expression on his face, looked unhappy with how he’d been forced to listen to, for the better part of an hour, Frederick’s almost frantic explanation of what had been going on, based solely on what he’d been told in a call from Robin. “Until someone camps out outside your house and watches for any signs of any of them, I’m not buying a word.”

“Chrom, please, we have to believe this. Why else would Maribelle be insistent on ignoring my calls, and why else would your sister be just as unreachable? Unless they’ve both misplaced their phones entirely, I have to believe they never made it to the house, and you should believe it too.” Showing every bit of his franticness in his voice, Frederick was wildly gesturing with both hands as he tried to make sense of what he’d been told. “We have to trust who has told us something on this one. There’s no other options here.”

Shaking his head, Chrom glanced to the nearest clock (it happened to be his own phone) and sighed, realizing what time it was and what he’d been arranged to have to do at that moment. “Listen, as much as this wild goose chase for two definitely-not-missing ladies sounds fun, there’s a meeting for all police chiefs and commanders starting in a few minutes, and it would look bad on all of us if the head of the Ylisstol station just didn’t show up. You can keep venting your conspiracy theories at someone while I’m gone, but they’re just that. Theories. If something was going on, surely they would have tried getting through to us.”

“You’ve got a lot of faith in whatever monster ended up with them in their clutches, but I understand.” Sighing as well, Frederick let his hands drop to his sides as he accepted his fate as being on the losing side of the discussion. “You enjoy your meeting and I will try to push this as far from my mind as I can. There’s no use in fretting over something out of my hands, especially not when there really isn’t much to go on.”

“Now you’re seeing things my way,” Chrom said with a laugh, turning to head down to where the meeting he’d spoken of was to be located. That left Frederick standing there in front of their hotel room alone, looking around the hallway to wonder where to go. He could have stepped into the room, or he could have followed behind Chrom, but something inside him pulled him to do a bit of exploring of the hotel while he had the chance.

In retrospect, going through the hallway by himself was most likely going to end up being a bad idea, given the fact that the last time he’d been out without Chrom he’d been chased down a stairwell by a crazy man, but there wasn’t much else for Frederick to be doing right then. At any rate, though, he was sure that Henry and Tharja both weren’t going to be around, and as long as he didn’t encounter either of them this time, he was more than okay. Most of the officers were going to be out and about, and nowhere near the hotel, at this time anyway, so there really should have been nothing to be afraid of, except maybe getting a bit lost if he strayed too far from where he’d already been.

Most of the doors he passed as he walked down the long hallway were marked with “Do Not Disturb” signs, all closed tightly and looking like the ones surrounding them. There were a couple propped open by various means, most often the manual lock on the door, and each one Frederick saw like that made him shake his head, unsure if the person staying inside was actually there or not, and if they weren’t, they were leaving their belongings wide open for someone to come in and steal. (Even though, as he thought a bit more, the entire hotel was rented out for a police convention, why would officers be stealing from their peers?) And then there was one door, at the end of the hall right next to another flight of stairs down to the lobby, that was sitting completely open, a chair keeping it in place.

It was a strange enough sight that it caused him to stop walking and look inside, trying to get a quick understanding of what was happening there. It clearly wasn’t housekeeping, as they would have used their cart or something easy to move to keep the door open, but why would the person staying in the room have moved a chair in front of the door? It was definitely one of the more unique things he’d seen in his life, and as much as he would have liked answers, if he didn’t see one right away he wasn’t going to wait around for one.

It wasn’t something he ended up seeing, but rather an answer came traveling through the air as someone in the room started (or possibly continued) arguing with someone else inside. “I just cannot wrap my head around why we were not invited to the little ‘meeting’ they have happening right now,” a snooty-sounding voice said, one that Frederick felt like he’d heard before once or twice while on the job. “Why, are we not good enough to be part of their private group?”

“Sir, by all means, we are far from what they are looking for when they called for everyone to attend that meeting. They want weathered chiefs and commanders, not people who turned tail and fled until things got better at home.” The female voice that replied to the initial one wasn’t as familiar to him, but there was still a notion in Frederick’s mind that he was listening to people who’d been through the Ylisstol police station at some point.

“It was not our fault that our superiors called for change I was unwilling to provide, and I chose to keep my freedom as opposed to losing it underneath their grimy thumbs!” As the snooty man spoke, someone in the room was moving around, causing a momentary panic in Frederick as he wasn’t sure where they were moving to. His initial thought was to just walk away, spying not being worth getting caught, but the man’s voice was far too familiar to him to just walk away. He felt the need to know if he really did know this man, and if it meant getting caught, so be it.

The woman in the room poked her head around the corner to look straight out the open door and right at Frederick while he stood there awkwardly, her pink hair cascading down halfway to the floor as a distraction to him. He was so busy following it with his eyes, trying to make sense of if he’d seen someone with that color and length of hair before that he didn’t notice the deadly look in her eyes as they narrowed at him, her voice cold as she said, “Virion, sir, we have an unwanted and unexpected visitor.”

“Oh, do we now? Perhaps it is one of those chiefs, maybe they have reconsidered not inviting the man in charge of the Rosanne region’s police force to their meeting!” There was the sound of hands clasping together, and soon there was a very ornately-dressed man standing next to the revealed head of the woman, the man’s hands dropping as he realized the “visitor” wasn’t anyone he was expecting, but his face twisting in thought as he tried to place if or where he’d seen said visitor. “Ah, you are a Ylissean officer, are you not?” he asked Frederick, who nodded, because he was also playing the game of remembering when he’d seen this man before. “Makes sense, you folk have to keep tabs on the rest of us, always getting involved in foreign affairs and—“

“I overheard you as I was walking down to the lobby and was curious as to why your voice sounded so familiar to me. Didn’t think that I was going to run into a few ex-refugees from the incident involving the main Valmese station usurping the smaller ones for a time.” Bowing in his memory of who this man was, Frederick continued his speech to cut the man off with, “It’s nice to see you here, mister Virion. Did you end up taking your ‘rightful’ position back after all?”

“—so, you remember myself and my greatness after all!” Accepting the bow with a flourish of his hand followed by a bow of his own, Virion was all smiles when he resumed standing tall next to his female companion. “Yes, I was able to take back, with some concessions and a few stray hateful looks, my position at the helm of the force at home.”

“By concessions he means having to answer to the main office at all times, and by stray looks he means not a single soul in Rosanne was happy to see him return to his position, aside from myself, but those are merely specifics.” Her lips pursed, the woman looked at Virion with slight contempt before shaking her head and ducking back into the room around the wall. She exited seconds later, showing her full height as inches taller than Virion was, her stern expression complemented with her rigid and unwelcoming body language. “Alas, no one minds it much anymore, not that I’ve made some changes to get them to accept it.”

Awkwardly laughing, Virion’s smile clearly faltered at the woman’s words. “Now, now, Cherche, there is no reason be saying such things to our visitor here, not when the world could be hearing us!” He made a motion with his head, rolling it around to look around at different corners in the ceiling, showing that he wasn’t worried so much about people listening to their conversation through the open door as he was about someone spying on them in some other way. “Come in, our most treasured guest! We are expecting a few others here in due time, would you be so kind as to hang around until then?”

“I suppose I could do that,” Frederick answered, glancing towards the stairs for a second before remembering who he would possibly find downstairs in the lobby if he went down there. There wasn’t a single soul down there that he was honestly interested in talking with at the moment, and that meant that, no matter how strange and contrived the situation seemed, he was going to accept that invitation. As he stepped into the room, he saw that it was identical to the one that he, Chrom, and Vaike were staying in, something that prompted him to ask a question of his own. “So, er, pardon if this is intrusive, but how many of you from your station are here?”

As Cherche held up two fingers, Virion gave the verbal reply. “Technically it is just I, the most noble Virion, here on official business, but I told the organization in charge of this conference that I was bringing my assistant along, regardless of if they allowed it. By giving us this spacious of a room, I would certainly assume that they allowed it!”

“The Rosanne region is far too small to call for more than one delegate, but my inclusion, despite being under the guise of an ‘assistant’, is a proud moment for our region.” Her face hadn’t changed at all as she spoke, making Frederick inwardly question just how proud of a moment that really was for them at all. “Now, have a seat wherever you would like, sir, and we will do our best to entertain you until the rest of the guests arrive.”

“There’s no need to entertain me, I can manage to entertain myself while you do whatever it was you were doing before I showed up.” Taking a seat on the bed in the room that looked like it hadn’t been slept in, Frederick’s first thought on what to do was to pull his phone out and examine its screen, it having miraculously survived the fall he’d put it through earlier in the day without any damage aside from the battery having popped out of place initially, something he’d been able to fix easily. He turned it on, checking to see if he’d gotten any sort of message or call from his wife, and when he found that he was still without anything, he sighed, catching the attention of both of the others present.

Neither of them commented on his sad sigh, going right back to the conversation they had been having prior to his arrival, with Virion complaining about his lack of inclusion in the commanders’ meeting that was happening while Cherche gave not-so-gentle reminders of why that was. It wasn’t anything interesting to listen to after a few minutes of it, leaving Frederick to only look longingly at his phone, hoping it would suddenly light up with some sort of call or message from someone he was honestly beginning to worry about. While he wanted to believe Chrom’s idea that the ladies were out for the day, the fact that Maribelle had yet to call him to let him know she’d made it home to begin with wasn’t sitting right with him. It was a sure sign that something was wrong, and he needed to find a way to prove that to his friend.

That way wasn’t going to be by sitting around idly and not trying to contact her, but there was no use in making phone calls that weren’t going to go through. That left him sitting there on that bed, running his hands over his phone and hoping for some sort of miracle to happen. He didn’t say anything at all during that time, not wanting to distract further from the conversation between the others, but even with their talking being the only thing he could hear he wasn’t picking up a single word of it.

Everything changed the moment more people came into the room, Virion and Cherche both stopping their argument to greet the newcomers. Frederick glanced at who had come in and, upon not recognizing the man or the woman that he saw, went back to looking at his phone, but when someone joined him on the bed he was quick to look and see who it was. “Lon’qu? What are you doing in here?”

“I was spending some time with the Chon’sin delegation and they were summoned to come up to this informal ‘meeting’, and they invited me along. I was not going to turn them down, although,” he looked over at where the two people were in a very one-sided conversation with Virion, “maybe I should have. That man is far too pompous for my liking. Now what’s your reasoning for being here?”

“I was, ahem, doing some exploring of this hotel and ended up stumbling upon their open door and getting involved that way. Doesn’t help matters that I’ve met Virion before on several occasions, back when he was taking refuge in Ylisstol while their homeland was being reconstructed or whatever it was.” Frederick actually paused after he gave his explanation, trying to remember what, exactly, had gone on that had driven the central police force in Valm to take over the smaller units, but that was the only part of the entire story that he could say he remembered. “It’s been years since then, though.”

Lon’qu gave a small nod as he made sense of what he’d just been told. “So it seems we’re both in here because of knowing people through strange circumstances. At least the people, even if they are uptight and pompous, aren’t too terrible. That is one, small plus side to this.”

“You’re referring to a certain someone with that pointed comment, aren’t you?” There was really no point to asking that, as Frederick knew that he was indeed referring back to Vaike, and watching as Lon’qu tensed up and exhaled a deep breath just further cemented that fact. “Don’t worry, I have no idea where he got off to after what happened earlier, and that means that, unless he just happens to stumble upon all of us being in here, he shouldn’t be anywhere close to where we are.”

That was enough reassurance to get Lon’qu to look more relaxed, his next breath a lot less forced. “Thank you for telling me that. If I have to hear that man call me a ‘woman-stealer’ one more time, I will make him regret it. It is not stealing a woman when she approached me first, and got under my skin and my defenses just to make her point. I did not take her from him, and he needs to understand that.”

“You’re right, he does, but that’s the thing about him, he hasn’t allowed himself to move past the part where you were involved in any of this, because he’s gotten stuck in the mindset that she could never do wrong. And…” Frederick glanced to the group still having their conversation at the door, making sure that none of them were paying any attention to what he and Lon’qu were talking about (as far as he could tell, they weren’t, but Cherche was side-eyeing them for some reason). “…you know, he’s already acted out some of that aggression just in what little conversation you have had. Can you imagine how much worse it will be once he finds out about—”

“Someone will end up telling him about O’wain while we are here in Plegia, I am sure of it. And I hope, by the graces of the gods, that it gets to be me, and I get to watch as every ounce of the hatred he holds towards me grows until he can’t stand it.” There was a smug tone to Lon’qu’s voice as he spoke, a devious look appearing in his eyes. “As I said earlier, if he chooses to assault me over this, where better than a convention filled with officers who would gladly take care of him for me?”

“It feels a bit wrong to know that you’re openly willing to bait him over this, but…” For all intents and purposes, Frederick always tended to be the more thoughtful one between himself and Chrom, but he knew that Chrom would have been actively trying to put a stop to all this before it even started. He didn’t feel like that was necessary, not when there was a clear plan in place to handle things and Lon’qu seemed to have really put thought into how said plan would be implemented if needed. “It would be due to his own faults that he would ever fall into the trap you’re setting for him, and hopefully he’ll learn enough about how to act towards you over the next few days to keep from doing just that.”

“I would hope so, but he seems to be dreadfully stupid and ignorant to the fact that he is consistently blaming the wrong person for what happened to him.” The deviousness was fading fast, but Lon’qu still moved to get one last zinger in before he went back to his normal, silent demeanor. “I just do not want to have to use my child as a piece in a war I did not ask to be part of. Does that make sense?”

Frederick’s first thought went straight to a certain conversation he’d had the day before that had ended with him being trapped in a stairwell due to someone being far too curious about his children, so he nodded. “It makes perfect sense, Lon’qu. As a father, you want to protect your family from anyone and anything that might bring harm to it, and—wait, what am I saying here? He’d never go as far as to want to hurt your son. I wouldn’t put it past Vaike to want to hurt you once he found out, but he would never, not in a million lifetimes, wish to hurt your child!”

“But that would not be because he’s my child,” Lon’qu replied, his voice cold like it usually was. “It would be because he’s Lissa’s.”

It didn’t matter what followed that sentence, because whatever did happen next was not important enough for Frederick to choose to focus on it. His mind was left wrapping itself around what Lon’qu had said, the serious and earnest way that he threw his reasoning out into the open, and even when the impact of that statement had fully sunk in, he still was trying to sort out just how true it was. There really was no way for Lon’qu to win in any of this, was there? He was always going to be seen as having stolen something from someone who felt they deserved it more, even though that hadn’t been anything close to what had actually happened and everyone knew it. Everyone except Vaike, that was.

And, because he’d been left completely alone in a hotel where he didn’t have any attachments to anyone he could find, Vaike was doing the one thing he could think of in that very moment and trying to decide on what he should do regarding a certain Feroxi officer that he held nothing but animosity towards. He was sitting down in the lobby, watching throngs of officers from all over walking by in heated discussions, waiting to catch a glimpse of anyone he knew. As far as he could tell, the big officials meeting that Chrom had gone into was still in full swing, judging by how no one seemed to have their chief nearby as they were talking, and while he knew that Frederick hadn’t gone to that meeting as he wasn’t allowed, he had no idea _where_ he’d gone off to instead. The last place he’d seen him was heading off somewhere with Chrom, but now that Chrom was busy, the possibilities on where he’d gone were nearly endless.

“Kinda hope good ol’ Fred ain’t doin’ anythin’ stupid, like talkin’ it up with that woman thief,” he said to himself as he looked across the lobby for what felt like the millionth time that afternoon. He wasn’t finding anyone that looked interesting to drop in on, and at that point he’d have been willing to find those two Plegian officers that had cornered them the night before. “Maybe he’s gone back t’the room after all, which’d be great t’see, since there ain’t much happenin’ out here.” Standing from his chair, he gave the lobby one last look before heading up the stairs up to their floor, going down to the room with no distractions.

The door was locked, which was predictable, but after he fished his key out of his pocket and unlocked it, when he found the room completely empty of any people he was slightly disheartened. “Okay, so he ain’t here. Maybe this place’s got a pool or somethin’ and he decided t’check it out. Not gonna blame the guy if he did, swimmin’ sounds mighty fantastic and is probably a great way t’get the mind off’a some real deep stuff.” He stifled a laugh when he thought about what he’d just said. “Heh, deep stuff, pools, the Vaike’s a comedy genius sometimes when he ain’t tryin’.”

What humor he found in what he’d said quickly wore off when he realized he was just as clueless as he had been before he came up to the room, absolutely no sign of the person he’d been looking for. With no idea of where to look next (even thought the pool idea sounded great, he didn’t want to start searching for that and inevitably having something bad befall him), he decided that staying in the room until someone came looking for him was probably the best thing he could do, and so started the laying around until that time came.

At least, that had been his plan and he was going to try sticking to it, but as he flopped down onto his bed for the time being, he caught a glimpse of the world outside the hotel window, the dust of the Plegian desert kicking up in the distance. “Man, just lookin’ out there would make a guy wanna take a cold shower,” he said to himself, sitting right back up and, after rummaging through his luggage to grab a change of clothes, locking himself in the bathroom to take himself a cold shower, just as he’d mentioned.

How long it was that he was intending on being in there, no one really knew, but when Chrom came into the room over an hour later, he was greeted with the sound of water running in the bathroom, an instant reason for him to worry something was going on. “Hey, who’s in there?” he asked, knocking on the bathroom door as the heavy hotel room door latched shut behind him. “Which one of you is it?”

No answer came, the water drowning out his question, but as Chrom looked to his own bed and saw a recently-worn shirt assigned to someone from the Ylissean station, he was given the peace of mind that whoever it was in there showering, it was someone who was allowed to be there. “You know what, I’m going to forgive whichever one of you decided my bed was the place for your dirty clothes, because at least it’s one of you and not someone from some other unit.” As he approached his bed, Chrom started shaking his head at the thought of some of the other possible candidates, a couple in particular crossing his mind more than once. “Now, if it does happen to be, say, one of those guys working under any of the Plegian units, I’m going to be unhappy. Not surprised, but unhappy.”

He was planning on pushing the clothes onto the floor for whoever they belonged to to pick back up, but when his hand got even remotely close to the pile left there on the bed he froze, his head turning to look into the side room and at the meticulously-made bed in there. “Wait a second, why am I even questioning who this all belongs to?” Chrom’s eyes drifted from that bed to the one the clothes were on, which was also made but not nearly as nicely as the one Frederick had slept in, and then across to the complete disaster of a bed that Vaike had been using. “If there’s anyone in this room who’d be enough of a mess to put his dirty clothes on the wrong bed, it sure as hell wouldn’t be Frederick.”

He was looking back to the clothes, knowing that the mystery was solved, but the fact remained that they were on his bed where they didn’t belong. Rather than raise his voice to try and overpower the sound of the water from the shower, Chrom gave a deep inhale and decided he was going to take matters into his own hands after all, reaching for the clothes if only to toss them onto the bed right next to his. That idea was quickly thwarted when something inside of the clothing pile started vibrating, catching Chrom by surprise and making him give up on trying to limit his contact with the clothes as he decided that he was going to do his friend a favor and fish his phone out to give it to him as soon as possible.

“Huh, would you look at this…” he said as he found the pocket that Vaike had left his phone in and grabbed it, taking a glimpse at the screen to see who was calling. “Why’s she calling him, of all people? She’s got my wife and kids up there under her care, if anything’s going on she should be contacting me about it.” Before he could start thinking up wild conspiracy theories to try and figure out the reason for the call, but with too much curiosity to simply wait for Vaike to explain it to him, he was answering it, remaining silent to see what would be said before he was prompted to say anything.

“You willing to actually talk this one out like a man with me,” he heard Sully saying on the other side, the obvious noises of children playing in the background (although the screeching he heard sounded way too young to be either of his kids), “or are you still too attached to listen to me complain about how much she’s getting underneath my skin?” Since it wasn’t the intended recipient on the side of the call Chrom was currently on, he couldn’t say anything to answer her, not without giving his spying away. “Gods damn it Vaike, did you pick up on accident? If I wanted to vent to someone not listening, I’d do it to a horse! In fact, I’ve been doing it to a horse all day! You’re getting an earful next chance I get!”

The line going dead signaled the end of the call, and even in the time it took for Chrom to let the hand holding the phone drop down to his side, he hadn’t begun to wrap his head around what he’d just heard. “She’s having…someone? get under her skin? Now who is there that she’d be in contact with that would do that, that would also be someone that Vaike cares about or, er, doesn’t care about? I’m not even sure what’s going on here.”

He made it roughly three steps towards the bathroom door, phone still in hand with the intention of knocking and telling Vaike what had just happened, but as his foot touched the floor on that third step a realization lit up in his mind. Without any other context, and with what little clues he’d been given, Chrom was fairly certain he’d just figured out what was going on regarding two missing women, and all it had taken was being present for a phone call not even intended for him.

He’d have to play this one off and act like it hadn’t happened, not revealing that he’d broken a friend rule by answering someone’s phone without permission, until someone directly and intentionally told him something. With that in mind, all he had to do was put the phone he currently held back where he’d found it, never tell Vaike that it had been him who’d answered the call, and then get the information out of someone on his own.

This wasn’t a mystery that was going to be properly solved that day, a fact he was reluctant to concede, but at least he had a strong lead for how to do it.

* * *

All night, both while he had been at work and once he’d gotten off, Robin couldn’t shake the thought that something was amiss regarding the phone call he’d received from Maribelle, as much as he would have liked to have been able to. He’d gone as far as to drive by the house twice that day and, upon finding it dark and empty with no sign of anyone being present early in the day, had called Frederick to let him know what he’d seen that time. The second instance was while on his way in to the station for his shift, the house looking exactly as it had earlier in the day when he drove past it.

Either those ladies were out doing something that was taking them forever, or there was a huge flaw in the story Maribelle had told him that morning, and he was going to find out which one it was in due time. The two options were that he was going to get another call pushing the arranged playdate back further, or he was going to go by the house the next day and drop his daughters off with no problems at all. Whichever one it ended up being, he was going to have to apologize for being so suspicious about what was happening, because at the end of the day, whatever it was they were doing wasn’t his issue.

Call it a bad side-effect of the job he had, but he was always going to get to the bottom of everything and investigate it thoroughly to the best of his abilities, and the case of where Maribelle and Lissa might have been was something demanding investigation. It also, for some reason, seemed to be taking up a lot of his attention when he went in to work, something that became apparent from the moment he walked into the station, passing by officers heading home or out on patrol for the day.

As Chrom typically did, and so as he was going to do while he was running the show, Robin made it a point to greet everyone he passed by through those doors by name. But it was the first person he saw passing him, arms laden with boxes, that put a halt on that practice for the moment. “Er, what are you doing here, Gaius?” he asked the orange-haired man who seemed to have been trying to rush out without getting caught. “I thought Chrom told you not to come in until he was back to keep tabs on you.”

“That might have been the plan, sure, but I had some, uh, pressing issue that needed to be taken care of in here today.” Having skidded to a halt when he’d been caught, Gaius gave a small smile behind the pile of boxes he was carrying. “You see, we’ve got some great ladies working here now, and I figured that we’d need a dapper gentleman to come in and treat them right while Chrom’s not around, so—“

“You came in because someone brought snacks, didn’t you?” The smile on Gaius’ face shrank, his eyes looking like he was a deer trapped in headlights, and he tried to rush through the door and out into the parking lot, but Robin held an arm out, catching on one of the boxes and knocking several of them to the ground. As Gaius gasped and dropped to the floor to rescue what had been lost, Robin shook his head, bringing a hand to the side of his face as he looked at the man scrambling to recover now-broken cookies that had come out of the boxes. “As I suspected. What, couldn’t you listen to Chrom this one time and not come in?”

Looking up from the broken cookies, Gaius replied, “Because, _sir_ , I wasn’t going to pass up on potluck day, not when Cordelia brought some sweets and I couldn’t let, you know, a certain someone else take them all.”

“So you took them all for yourself? Have some courtesy and leave a few for everyone else, at least.” Motioning with his hand for Gaius to stand back up in front of him, Robin waited until his demand was met before he said anything else. “Seriously, why do you wait until Chrom’s not here to start pulling this stuff?”

“That would be, uh, because Chrom’s not here.” Gaius shuffled a bit where he stood, glancing at the floor and the crumbs that were still scattered that he’d been unable to save. “Do you think I would be this obvious about coming in if he were here? He’d have me fired or something just for coming in for the potluck and taking what I want before anyone else could get it.”

Robin sighed, shaking his head once more. “You’re hopeless, Gaius. While I won’t question your usefulness on cases where we need the mindset of a criminal to solve things, I will question your keen sense of knowing exactly when there’s something of interest here that you’re not to be present for.”

“Hey now, the potluck’s been on the calendar for weeks now. Not my fault that Chrom set the rule to keep me out for it. Everyone knew I was coming anyway.” He shrugged, nearly knocking the top box off of his stack. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a night of sweets and old reruns on TV to take in, I’ll be back tomorrow if you need anything.”

Before Robin could get a single word out about how he shouldn’t come back the next day, Gaius was running off into the parking lot, cookie crumbs flying out of one of his boxes in a trail behind him. “I swear, that man’s going to cause more trouble than he wants to get into if he keeps up that behavior,” Robin said to himself, making a mental note to send someone to come sweep the entryway before the crumbs sitting there attracted any more unwanted visitors. “He’s useful on occasion, but most of the time he’s…not.”

“Oh, Robin, you’re in for the evening! How perfectly timed, as I was just—why are there crumbs lying about?” Her glasses being pressed up the bridge of her nose as she spoke, the stately and wiry Miriel had made her approach to where Robin was still standing. She was quick to disregard the crumb situation when she got her mind back on track to what she was talking about as she’d headed towards him. “As I was previously saying, I was just informed that we will once again have the on-loan officers for the evening, and now that they have been with us on multiple occasions, I assume this means that you will be able to take an early evening tonight.”

“That’s some good news, thanks Miriel. Say, did you see that Gaius somehow ended up in here today after all, after being explicitly told by Chrom to not show up?” When the woman nodded, her face unchanging from its flat and calculating expression, Robin figured that she just hadn’t bothered trying to kick the guy out. “You know that if you knew he was here and you didn’t do anything about it, technically you aided in his rule-breaking, and that’s not exactly a good thing.”

For as much effort as she’d put into getting her glasses into a proper position, Miriel quickly pulled them a bit further down her nose so that she could glance at Robin over them. “If it were not for me, he would still be raiding the food that had been left for the evening crew, so I did quite enough to get him to leave. If anyone is to be punished for his appearance, let it be the woman who told him she was bringing sweets.”

“Don’t worry, I plan on talking to Cordelia about that,” Robin assured, “because I’m fairly certain the rule for this potluck was nothing sweet that would inevitably call for Gaius to come on it. That’s why I didn’t bring anything, all Sumia offered to make was pies and we didn’t need that here today.”

“You discuss it with her, I will go make sure that our overnight crew is getting ready for assuming leadership for the night. If all goes well, I cannot see us both being here for more than a few hours into the evening.” Miriel once again pushed her glasses up her nose that she could see, before giving Robin a nod and walking in the direction of the main gathering room to the station. He was tempted to follow her and put off the conversation he had just agreed to have, but he knew that by doing that, he would open himself up to endless scolding from her about how he wasn’t using his position right.

Instead, he went walking towards his office, looking longingly at the locked door to Chrom’s office as he passed by it. He knew where the key was to the office, just like he knew where the keys to all the others were, but he was going to restrain himself from using it to get inside and sit in the chief’s chair while the chief was away. “Damn it, Chrom, always leaving the hard and dirty work to me,” he mumbled as he walked past another locked office door, this one belonging to Frederick. Even though it was years later, he still couldn’t walk past there without thinking about the Christmas Eve they’d all been stuck at the station and what he’d seen when he unlocked and opened that door.

“Why did they have to schedule the conference to be anywhere that isn’t here in Ylisse?” he continued, shaking his head as he started getting closer to the temporary offices, the rooms that were constantly changing with who was using them. He could already hear the sounds of people hard at work typing up and preparing reports for various things, and alongside the clacking was the sound of clashing music interests, something he should not have been hearing at all. But he didn’t want to get on anyone’s case about that, they were just giving themselves something to work to.

The first office he poked his head into had a stack of paperwork sitting on the desk, a steaming cup of coffee right next to it, but nobody present to claim it. “Interesting, who’d be drinking coffee that hot in the middle of summer?” he asked, leaving the office and turning to go to the next one, only to run right into the person responsible for the hot coffee in the office, nearly knocking a plate stacked high with mini-sandwiches out of her hands as he bumped her. “Oh gods, I’m so sorry! Wasn’t aware this was your office tonight, Panne.”

Her eyes going wide from the unintentional contact, Panne quickly let them shrink into a glare that she kept on her face until after she’d pushed past Robin. “Yes, it most certainly is, and with how much paperwork your dear secretary has given me, I might be here all night working on your behalf.”

“Yeah, Miriel said something about trusting you and your friends with the station for the night, but I didn’t think that meant pushing off all my responsibilities onto you.” Following her into the office and watching as she set her plate down next to the coffee before taking her seat, he chose to sit down in the only other chair in the cramped room. She was silent as she continued glaring at him, occasionally taking a bite of a sandwich or a sip of her still-hot drink. “Trust me, had I been made aware of that decision before now, I would have told her to not give you so much to do.”

“Work is work, it is merely here to pass the time while we wait for nothing to happen overnight.” Panne’s words were curt and spoken quickly, between sips of her coffee. “I must thank whoever provided such treats for the evening, because I do not know how well I would fare in all of this if I was without food or drink.” Setting her cup down, she picked up the first few sheets of paper off of the stack and skimmed them with no change to her angered expression, although when she was done reading she seemed to be a little bit more relaxed. “This should be an easy night, if reports of animals being rescued from trees are what I’m being tasked with.”

Robin raised an eyebrow at what he’d just heard, getting conflicting vibes from what Panne was saying and what her face was telling him, but he let it roll off his shoulders as he stood up, bidding her farewell and a fun night. “I’ll have to let you know how much I appreciate you doing this after I get a good night’s sleep,” he told her as he left the office, her eyes still narrowed as she watched him go. Once he was back to the hallway he sighed, closing his eyes for a moment as he told himself that her doing his paperwork for him was a one-time deal and that it was for letting him relax.

“Robin, you’re here after all!” The voice that called out to him was coming from the office right across from Panne’s, and it belonged to someone who sounded far too young to be working in a police station, which would have been cause for concern for anyone else besides Robin himself. “Come in here, come look at what we’ve been working on!”

“Been working on? You’re staying in overnight, you should have just gotten here, Nowi.” Another sigh waiting in the back of his throat as he popped into the office the chipper woman was sitting in, he found that this was the office with the offending music, something that was turned off as he came inside. But it wasn’t Nowi, with her big smile that made her look so much younger than she actually was, that had turned it off, something he realized when the music disappeared and she hadn’t moved a muscle. That prompted him to look behind the desk she was sitting on, seeing another young-looking person back there with a scared look in his eyes. “And you’re here already too, Ricken. At this rate, everyone who’s going to be here overnight is—“

“I’m from the day coverage, actually,” Ricken corrected, still looking timid even as he spoke. “That’s why Nowi wanted to show you what we’ve been working on.”

“Yeah, he’s right! Look, look, you’ve got to see this!” Holding up a sheet of paper with a bunch of dots and boxes marked on it, most of them with prominent Ns in them, but a bunch having big Rs inside, Nowi was actually beaming as she presented it to Robin. “We’ve been playing Dots and Boxes every time we switch shifts, and we’ve finally finished it. Cool, huh? Don’t you think this is the greatest idea ever?”

Taking the paper into his hand to examine it, noting how some of the boxes had their completion date written inside in impossibly tiny numbers, Robin’s first thought about it had nothing to do with either of the people who’d been playing this game. “Reminds me of all the times that Vaike and Stahl would try to get a few rounds of this done when they’d be on shifts together,” he mused, seeing Nowi’s face light up at the news that someone else had played the game too. “Of course, most of the time one of them would forget it was their turn and would come in for their next shift with someone having ruined the board, but that’s a specific I’m sure you didn’t want to hear.”

“Just hearing that we weren’t the first to try it was good enough!” she chirped in reply, snatching the paper back and throwing it down on the desk, all while Ricken sat there, setting up dots for another round. “We’re going to try and get another one finished this year, since that one only took us six months!”

“Good luck to you two, and good job on keeping that one hidden from wayward pens that enjoy marking up the page.” With a laugh, and a wave given to the two people he was leaving, Robin continued on with his journey down the hallway of offices, checking to see what was in each one of them. The next one he reached had some papers scattered on the desk but no one inside, so he assumed it belonged to whichever one of those two the last one hadn’t (a fact reinforced when he saw a baseball cap hanging off the corner of the chair, a hat that he knew belonged to Ricken for when the guy was trying to look a bit older). Moving on, he came across yet another office with the door wide open and the sounds of music wafting from inside, this music classical and, in his opinion, a lot easier to work to.

But when he looked into the office, he found that it was empty, although the phone sitting on the desk playing music was a clear giveaway that the person working in there had merely stepped out for a break. He looked across the hall to the next office he was going to drop in on, a side view of someone’s red hair visible from his angle, and while he considered waiting for this officer to come back to their place, he decided that chatting with the lovely lady he’d been looking for all along was better. “Please, if this is about anyone aside from myself, I would rather you not come in,” Cordelia said as Robin was approaching her office’s open doorway. “I need to finish up this case report and head home for the evening.”

“Not until you explain something to me.” Kicking what was holding the door open out of the way so that they could be speaking in private, Robin ducked out of its way as it closed shut beside him, Cordelia looking completely unamused as he did. “Why’d you go against orders and bring sweets, and then tell Gaius to come in and get them? That’s two rules right there that Chrom himself set that you broke.”

She had started to shift in her seat once Chrom had been brought up, an appearance of looking uncomfortable that faded as quickly as it had appeared. “I thought it was unfair that we were excluding him from the station’s activities just because Chrom’s away for the week, and so I thought letting him come by would be acceptable, just this once. You don’t understand what leaving him out does to him, he starts speaking of breaking the law just because he can and we can’t allow that, now can we?”

“Then take him some sweets on your own time, butter him up because you like him without involving him in our affairs here at the station.” Robin crossed his arms over his chest, watching as Cordelia began looking offended at what she’d just heard. “He’s a part-time police officer, he can’t be trusted without guidance and without purpose, and since Chrom’s not here we can’t give him either.”

“I don’t _like_ him, he’s merely a member of the police family that I want to take care of. Besides…” She glanced away from Robin, her eyes shifting wildly as she bit on her lip for a moment to gather her thoughts. “I only invited him because I made enough sweets for both of our food-friendly family members and I wanted him to get his fair share. Although I made sure not to tell Gaius he wasn’t getting everything, because I know all too well that he would have tried to get what rightfully belongs to Stahl.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Robin said, “Doesn’t change the fact that bringing sweets was on the not allowed list, but I see the chivalry in it. I’ll make sure this one doesn’t make it to Chrom’s ears while he’s gone and,” he looked to see the faintest darkening of color in Cordelia’s cheeks, “gods, what’s going on with you? Getting scolded like this make you embarrassed, or is it to do with someone I’ve mentioned?”

Cordelia reacted by covering her face and trying to play off any blushing she might have just been doing. “It’s embarrassment, I’m not used to being the rule-breaker you’re accusing me of being today, and it’s a mighty strange feeling I’ve got happening right now. Could you please let me finish up here so I can leave without any more distractions like this?”

“I don’t see how reminding you to not break the rules is a distraction, but I’ll see myself out.” Opening the door, Robin gave Cordelia a smile as he watched her bring her hands from her face and try straightening up some of the clutter on her desk. “And next time, no matter which of your boyfriends it is, give them their sweets somewhere that isn’t here.” That comment earned a stapler being thrown at him as he laughed his way out of the office, Cordelia muttering something about how unappreciated that comment was as she got up to retrieve what she’d thrown.

She was lucky that she hadn’t hit someone with that thing with her toss, and that was because the person in the office across from hers was returning from his quick break at the moment she’d thrown the stapler. He watched as it flew past Robin, hitting the floor and skidding into the doorway of his own office, laughing as he saw it happen. “What kind of angering happened here?” he asked with a loud laugh, alerting Robin to his presence. “And hello to you, mister Robin sir. A good night for working hard, yes?”

“I would definitely agree! It’ll be an easy night for all of you running the shift tonight, especially with all the food we’re bound to have gotten gathered here.” Watching as the older man he’d been startled by continued laughing, Robin went from jovial after the interaction with Cordelia to a bit suspicious of what was so humorous. “Say, er, Gregor, why are you still laughing? The stapler wasn’t that funny, was it?”

“There is always time for the laughing in life!” Even with his exclamation, Gregor made it a point to stop his laughter as quickly as he could, stepping inside his office and waving for Robin to follow him in. He contemplated accepting the offer, but after hearing the man’s chortles picking back up for whatever reason he had for it, he decided to decline and move on to finding wherever it was that Miriel had gotten off to. She had said that she was going to be finding the overnight crew, yet he was the one who had done just that, so where could she have disappeared to?

It wasn’t that hard of a mystery to solve, not when he walked into the main gathering area in the station and heard her voice coming from the front entrance to the building. “I was under the assumption that you had no idea he was going to be here, but judging by how you were quick to take a treat from him, I am beginning to think otherwise,” she was heard saying, as he approached to see who it was she was talking to. When he got to the doors, Miriel spun on one foot to look at him, her normal stern expression on her face. “Robin, sir, I believe we have a new twist into the story of Gaius’ surprise appearance here today.”

“I already took care of that with Cordelia, but you can’t be that shocked that he’d wait around to rub it in Stahl’s face that he got snacks from a pretty lady.” Looking at who he’d just referenced, while Stahl was busy finishing up munching on a cookie he’d been given, the corner of Robin’s mouth ticked upward. “But, I bet he’d be plenty pleased to learn that she didn’t _just_ bring stuff for Gaius, because she’s a person with some common decency.”

At the same time that Miriel stiffened up and gave her superior a frown, Stahl gave him a look that showed he doubted what had been said, even if he was starting to become visibly excited. “Are you sure that she brought some for me?” he asked, a few bits of food still in his mouth that he quickly swallowed down when Robin nodded. “That’s the best news ever! I bet Gaius a couple rounds of drinks that I wouldn’t have been left out of the sweets-giving, I’m so glad I was right!”

“Sir, is this really the behavior you want to be promoting?” Miriel asked, being promptly ignored until after Robin had explained to Stahl that he needed to go talk to Cordelia about the specifics, Stahl rushing off like a man on a mission. “He is already going to eat everyone who provided food tonight out of any hope of leftovers, is giving into Cordelia’s strange fixation on pleasing him and Gaius both going to do anyone any favors?”

“It might do a thing or two towards getting her the love she’s always wanted, and who am I to meddle with her matchmaking plans?” Placing a hand on Miriel’s shoulder and giving it a small pat, Robin gave a content sigh. “I still don’t know how Chrom can deal with all this on a regular basis, and you know what? I’m fine with never having to deal with it again after this week. Next time there’s a conference, even if it’s halfway across the world, I’m letting you be in charge while I go with Chrom.”

“The gesture is kind, but I am fairly certain the hierarchy of positions would put several other officers higher than me if a situation like that one came about.” A smile breaking through onto her face, Miriel quickly brushed it (and Robin’s hand) off, her mind focusing on getting right back to work. “Now let us be quick in taking care of everything for us to do here tonight. As I am sure you have gotten to see, I took the liberties of giving our night officers a taste of what you would be doing if you were here all night.”

He nodded, remembering the giant stack of papers he’d seen in Panne’s office, and the sheer determination in the woman’s face as she’d prepared herself for taking care of it. “Thanks for that, by the way. I think Sumia’s going to enjoy me getting to be home at a decent hour tonight, after spending last night sleeping on the couch.”

“At least you have someone at home to care about your sleeping habits. Alas, that is exactly why I made sure to allow this to happen at least one night, so that you could spend time with your family.” Miriel sighed, heading back into the main room with Robin right on her heels. “I have no desire to distract you from your family any longer than needed, so let us begin getting everything taken care of.”

Three hours and only one call requiring dispatching any officers to a scene later, Robin left the station in the hands of three officers in various states of being borrowed from other places and one regular fixture on the evening beat, heading back to his house with nothing on his mind other than getting to spend some quality time with his daughters and wife before they all went to bed. But when he came inside and saw his two girls already dozing off on the couch, neither of them able to keep themselves awake to wait for their father, he had conflicting emotions overtake him. On one hand, they were as excited to see him come home as he was to be coming home, but on the other…they needed to be well-rested for the coming day and what was planned for it.

He chose to let them go ahead and sleep, although he was sure to carefully and quietly carry them down to their room, tucking each of them in even though they were really unaware that it was him doing so. After that, it was a bit of chatting with Sumia to make up for their brief conversations earlier in the day and then they were off to bed as well, tucking in early as a bit of a surprise because Robin had assumed he’d been sleeping on the couch after coming home past midnight for the entire time Chrom was gone. There were few interruptions in the night, his phone ringing with pressing work questions that he stirred only long enough to give short answers to, but overall it was a fairly smooth night.

And when morning came and there was no sign of Maribelle trying to call and reschedule the playdate she’d pushed back a day, he was pretty sure that everything had been okay to begin with. He shouldn’t have doubted that her kids were sick after all, and while a one-day illness was a bit odd, he wasn’t going to question it or Maribelle’s judgment on if either of her sons would be unwell while playing with the two girls ready to spend a few hours with boys much younger than them.

Getting the girls ready for the playdate, after they’d woken up and eaten breakfast, wasn’t that hard of a task at all. They were eager to get on with it, having been disappointed that it hadn’t happened the day before, and that meant a lot of bickering and fighting over which one of them was going to get to play with which kid. “I’m older, I get to pick which one I want to play with first, Cynthia!” Morgan sassed, her cheeks puffed out as she flailed her arms in anger at her twin sister. “And since I get to pick, I’m picking the baby-ier one!”

“But I want to get to play with him first! You always pick first and you _always_ pick to get to play with Freddy first, and I want to get to this time!” Her own hands being thrown in the air, Cynthia knocked one of her pigtails wildly as she tried to hold her own against her sister. “Please Morgan, just this once!”

“I said I’m older, so I pick first, and I’m picking him!” Morgan raised her voice with every word, until her sister was backing away in defeat, even though minutes later they were picking up their argument exactly where they’d left it off. It wasn’t every day that the girls got to argue about which other kid they’d get to play with—normally they were fighting over which one of them would have to suffer with hanging around someone—so Robin wasn’t going to put a stop to it until he felt he had to. That moment came when punches started being thrown, Morgan deciding to get physical when Cynthia wouldn’t back down from her insistence that she get a chance to pick for once.

With one hand grabbing one daughter’s wrists and the other hand pushing the other one back, he looked between the two almost-identical girls with disappointment in his eyes. “For being as close to one another as you two are, I just don’t get why you can’t get along whenever these disagreements start. Morgan, you let Cynthia pick which of the boys she’s going to play with first, it’s not like you don’t pick first about everything else.”

“Ha, I win this time, meanie,” Cynthia bragged, sticking her tongue out at Morgan, who tried squirming out of her father’s grasp to attack her sister for the action he wasn’t even watching. “Don’t worry, I’ll let you get to play with him too, I don’t wanna leave Brady out so I’ll play with him after I play with his brother.” Stars in her eyes as she beamed at her ever-frustrated sister, she continued, “And after that, I’m going to play with them both. At once. Because I get to pick.”

“Daddy, she’s bullying me!” Faking a sniffle to act like she was actually hurt by her sister’s words, Morgan waited until her father let go of her wrists to drop her hands down in front of her, bowing her head slightly to play up the role of innocent in the situation. “Cynthia’s being so mean about getting to pick, you can’t let her do that!”

“She’s not being mean, Morgan, you’re just being overdramatic. You can’t always get what you want, and this time, I’m making sure of that. Before I leave you two to play, I’m going to make sure Maribelle knows that Cynthia’s getting to make her pick of kid to play with first, so that you don’t try convincing her otherwise.” That was when he looked at the younger twin, Cynthia’s tongue unable to retract fast enough to not be seen by her father. “Or maybe I’ll just let her settle this squabble herself! Cynthia, are you being rude?”

The girl shook her head, sending her pigtails bobbing in all directions. “I’m just doing what she always does to me, Daddy. It’s not being rude when she does it, so why’s it being rude when I am?”

“It’s rude no matter who’s doing it. You two need to learn to get along a lot better, I can’t think of anyone that I would…” His voice trailing off as he thought of several people he would have this exact kind of relationship with, even if they weren’t close siblings like the girls were, Robin sighed to put an end to his sentence, picking up with a new thought entirely. “My point is, sticking your tongue out at someone on the losing side of an argument is rude no matter what, and I’m disappointed in both of you for making this last this long.”

“Sorry, Daddy,” they said in unison, before exchanging a glare between them, something that made him sigh once more to see. How had they just heard him tell them to get along better, only to do that? These girls were clearly focused more on which one was on top rather than their relationship as siblings, and he wasn’t sure how much there was he could do to get them to rethink things.

At least there was the distraction of being able to tell them it was time to head over to Maribelle’s house to get to see the boys, and that put a temporary stop on any hard feelings the girls had for each other. They squealed and rushed to get out into the van in the driveway, not even fighting over who got to sit where (because Robin did warn them that if he heard them bickering over who got which side, he wasn’t going to take them), and for the entire time they were driving they did nothing but talk about all the fun things they were going to do with the boys, not mentioning once the fact that they were heated over who they were going to play with first.

The house they pulled up to was exactly as dark as it had been when Robin had driven by it the day before, a strange sight to be seen. “Here, let’s go up to the door and knock, it’s only polite,” he said, shutting the van off in the street in front of the house and opening his door. Normally when he drove by the house, which he did on occasion because the road through this neighborhood would get him to other parts of town a lot faster than any other route, no matter what there would be a car in its driveway, the one that belonged to Maribelle usually. He did think that, possibly, since Frederick was gone for the week she might have parked in his spot instead, but that thought made no sense to him because he knew that they’d gone to Ferox in Maribelle’s car so that she could drive back safely.

Unless he’d loaned his vehicle off to someone while he was gone, Frederick’s car would have been in the garage and Maribelle’s was still missing, and that was setting off all sorts of warnings in Robin’s mind. He’d been willing to accept the idea that she’d been out and about the day before, even with sick children, but two days in a row, this one without warning the family who was going to bring their own kids over? It didn’t add up, and he wasn’t going to let this go without explanation any longer.

“Maribelle, open this door right now,” he bellowed as he knocked on the front door, his daughters running up behind him to see what was waiting for them on the other side. “You better be in there, where else would you be right now?”

“Daddy, why’s she not coming to the door?” Cynthia asked, dragging her foot across the wooden porch they were standing on in a heart shape. “Do you think she’s still sleeping and forgot to wake up for this?”

He considered that idea for a half-second before shutting it down. “No, because she’s got two young children who would make sure she’s awake, and even if for some reason they were still asleep too, she’s got Lissa here right now and I’m certain Lissa would be awake by now.” He paused, now questioning a part of his own logic, before shrugging it off and resuming banging on the door. “Okay, she would be awake but potentially still in bed, knowing how much of a lazy person she is. Point here is, someone’s awake in this house if anyone’s in there at all.”

Morgan had taken to peering through the window that overlooked the porch, her hands cupping her eyes so that she could see inside. “It’s so dark inside, it doesn’t look like anything’s on at all, Daddy. I think Cynthia’s right, she’s sleeping and so is everyone else.”

“I like when I’m told I’m right.” Beaming, Cynthia stopped drawing her hearts with her foot to skip over to beside her sister, taking up an identical position. “But, um, it doesn’t look like anyone’s here at all. There’s no toys or shows or games or anything happening!”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Robin said, slamming his hand against the door one last time before turning and slumping against it, pulling his phone from his pocket and dialing in a number completely from memory. “I refuse to believe they’ve gone out for a meal or for some shopping, it’s completely against Maribelle’s code to skip out on her agreements like this. She’s up to something, and she—hello, Frederick? You’re not busy, are you?”

The man he’d called, answering his phone while sitting in a lecture about proper handcuffing standards, stood up as he heard the voice on the other end. With his voice barely above a whisper as to not disrupt the lecture any more than his standing and heading for the door already had, Frederick replied, “I wouldn’t say I’m not busy, but if you’re calling me I have to assume it’s nothing to do with the station and that it’s urgent. What’s going on?”

“I don’t even know how to word this one, my friend.” Robin scratched alongside his jawline as he considered how to approach the topic at hand, but watching as his daughters, both of whom had been so excited for what they were supposed to be doing that day, were slowly coming to realize that no one was home and that meant that there was no playing for them made him think up the best way to say what needed to be said. “I’m standing outside of your house right now, Morgan and Cynthia both heartbroken that your wife’s decided to disappear with your children in tow.”

“She’s what? Disappeared?” Now out in the hall just outside the conference room the lecture had been in, Frederick glanced around to see if there was anyone listening in on him before he spoke again, and once he’d determined the coast was clear, he said, “Robin, if this is some practical joke I don’t want any part of it. Maribelle’s not responded to a single one of my calls since I got here, and you saying she’s disappeared is only adding to my worry that something bad has happened to her.”

“I’d alert the authorities, but in that case the authorities are us, you know? Could always get some Feroxi officers on the case, but there’s so much land between the town you all left from and here that it could be weeks before we can get the distance covered.” The deep sigh he heard on the other end of the phone sounded disheartened, something that Robin did not enjoy hearing in the slightest. “Here, I’ve got an idea that could help us buy some time. I know one guy from Ferox and I know he’s there with you guys, but we both know someone who’s up there right now and could get in touch with their stations a lot faster than we could, because she’s there with them.”

“You’re saying that one of us needs to call Sully and get her to help us out with this.” Frederick didn’t pose his statement as a question because he wasn’t asking for clarification on it; he knew that was exactly what Robin was implying with what he’d said. “I’ll get right on it, I assume she’d take my call a lot better than she would yours, and I know you have two girls that need to have everything explained to them. Please let them know that I feel terrible that their little playdate has been ruined, but finding out where Maribelle and the boys have gotten off to is more important than honoring that event.”

“Understood, sir. I’ll leave you be and I’ll get right on—gods damn it someone else is calling me right now.” Pulling his phone away from his ear to check to see who was calling, Robin had to do a double take when he saw that it was Maribelle’s contact information coming up. He switched the phone onto speakerphone and told Frederick, “Believe it or not, it’s your wife calling me right now. Maybe she’s figured out what time it is and is trying to explain herself for not being here, but I’m going to take this call.”

“By all means, do! Let me know what she says right away, and if you could pass on the message that she needs to call me right away, I would appreciate it.” To speed up the process of Robin answering that second call, Frederick ended the one he was part of, giving a sigh of moderate relief once he wasn’t being heard by someone a country away. He looked towards the door he’d come out of and thought about his obligation to be inside listening to the seminar, before choosing to follow through with Robin’s suggestion and calling someone who still would be of more use than a bunch of officers stuck in Plegia were.

 “Robin, I just got off the phone with Sumia and she said you’d already brought the girls over to the house, which would be something of wonder if I were there to receive them!” Her laugh shrill and very obviously forced, Maribelle followed up her greeting with, “I guess I should explain that we are not in Ylisstol and, by all means, are quite far from it. But whatever you do, don’t let Frederick or anyone know that we never made it back, because we don’t need them worrying.”

“Is that Robin on the other end?” he heard Lissa ask in the background, making him feel a lot less worried on Chrom’s behalf knowing that she was okay as well. Maribelle must have covered her phone’s receiver and said something to her friend, because the next thing he heard from Lissa had her knowing exactly that he was the one being spoken with. “Oh my gosh please don’t tell anyone we didn’t go home. I’m not getting back in the car no matter who tells me I have to do it, it’s not fun riding through the mountains.”

“Where’d you two end up?” There were many answers that Robin was suspecting he’d be given, but he needed to ask to get any one of them. The silence he was met with showed that, even though they’d been caught in the act of ditching their responsibility of being there at the house, he wasn’t going to get straight answers out of them. “Okay, well, if you’re not going to tell me, Maribelle, by all means, call your husband so he’s not as worried about you as he currently is.”

“My dear Frederick’s worried about me? Oh goodness.” It was clear, based on how Maribelle would reply to that, that it was just any mention of their location that would drive her and Lissa both to silence. “I’ll get right on calling him as soon as we’re done here. I bet he’s been frantic as he’s been worrying about my whereabouts.” Since she had mentioned making that call “as soon as” they were done, Robin was given the impression that there was going to be more to their conversation, but when the call quickly was dropped, he was shown otherwise. However, in the moments between her last word and the end of the call, he’d heard the almost booming yells of someone unhappy with something going on, yelling that he knew very well from hearing similar shouts while at work sometimes.

There was a bit of beauty in hearing Sully’s voice saying “Someone here’s in trouble” when he knew that he’d been the one to send Frederick looking to her for answers, but at the same time, there were a lot of questions he had about why the ladies were up at the horse camp when they shouldn’t have been. Those questions weren’t his to ask, and he knew he’d get the answers when someone else had them, so he just looked to his daughters and, after clearing his throat, told them, “Come on girls, we’ll have to do this another day. Let’s go home and have fun there before I’ve got to go into work.”

Neither Morgan nor Cynthia liked to hear that, but there was nothing else he could have done about it.


	5. A Summer's Worth of Secrets, Revealed

Chrom had spent most of the time since picking up the phone and overhearing a conversation he shouldn’t have heard dwelling on everything he couldn’t ask about regarding it. How was he going to sidle up next to Vaike and ask him to explain anything and everything he might have known about what Sully was saying, without making it completely obvious that he’d been the one to answer her call? There wasn’t any way that he was aware of to make it happen, and that meant that he needed to get that explanation from some other source, preferably one that would reliably answer their phone.

On the morning of their second full day in Plegia, after a breakfast where he asked Lon’qu if he’d heard anything from Lissa (which he was quick to admit he hadn’t, even though he didn’t seem to be too upset about that), Chrom went back up to their room to give everything a bit more thought on how to approach it. He was more than aware that Frederick was still going without having had contact with his wife, and now he knew that Lon’qu was having the same problem. “Funny that, out of all of us here, the only one being called by a lady is the one insistent he doesn’t have a girlfriend,” he said to himself, glancing over at Vaike’s empty bed and laughing. “Bet he’s off somewhere talking to that ‘not-girlfriend’ right this very moment.”

Had Chrom known that the person he was speaking about was within listening range of the post-laugh comment, he might not have said it, but that was what made hearing it all the more aggravating to Vaike, as he sat right on the other side of the wall, having hidden in Frederick’s part of the room in case this exact thing happened. “Y’know, I’m right in here,” he announced, catching Chrom by surprise as he stood up and came out into the main room. “Don’t be accusin’ me of talkin’ t’anyone, ‘cause I sure ain’t.”

“It wasn’t an accusation, don’t worry. Besides, you shouldn’t be up here right now, you’re supposed to be getting ready for a day full of seminars.” Shaking his head at the appearance of his friend, while silently thanking the gods that he hadn’t been overheard while admitting that he knew about that phone call, Chrom motioned towards the door with a quick flick of his wrist. “Go on, get downstairs and over to the conference hall. You’re going to raise red flags if you don’t show up.”

“Does it matter if I raise ‘em or not? I ain’t the guy they wanted to see here, me showin’ up doesn’t mean much at all.” Scratching the back of his head, which resulted in him running his fingers through his hair, Vaike gave a shaky sigh. “Just from yesterday, from bein’ alone and unwanted and not accepted by anyone here, it’s super clear this ain’t the place for the Vaike t’be hangin’ out. Can’t ya just, I’unno, tell everyone I went home?”

“You, admitting defeat like this? That’s not something you ever do.” Chrom’s eyes narrowed towards Vaike, as the blond man stiffened up and looked like he’d been caught in some act. “What do you have going on here that you’re trying to keep me in the dark about?”

“There’s nothin’ goin’ on, don’t ya worry ‘bout it.” The way that Vaike seemed to be trying his hardest to play something off was getting more and more concerning to Chrom, if only because he so badly wanted to know what he did know. “Listen, you’re right and it’s only gonna get bad if ol’ Vaike doesn’t show up to what he’s supposed t’go to, I’ll just head on down now and you can—hey wait a sec, why’re you up here if there’s stuff we’re all t’be doin’ today?”

Now it was Chrom’s turn to get onto the defensive, although he had a logical and reasonable explanation for why he was in the room. “I have the afternoon off, my only commitment today is to a meeting later tonight. Unlike you. Now get going.” He motioned towards the door again and, although he hesitated and didn’t look like he wanted to go even after his acceptance, Vaike did eventually leave the room. Once the door was shut behind him, Chrom gave a moment to reflect on what had just happened, shaking it off and grabbing his phone once he knew what he was about to do.

As predicted, Olivia was quick to answer the call she was receiving, not wanting to keep her husband waiting for even a second longer than needed. “Hi there, Chrom,” she said in greeting, sounding just like she tried to always do when her husband was calling her. “Are you missing us? We miss you.”

“I am missing you, yes, but I have to ask something while it’s on my mind and I have the time to do so.” Casting a glance to the door that had just closed, he let his eyes shut for a second as he silently asked Vaike to forgive him for what he was about to do, before spitting his question out to Olivia. “That you know of, have you seen or heard Sully talking to a certain one of my officers here and telling him anything out of the ordinary?”

“Out of the ordinary…? Do you mean them talking at all? Because I can’t recall overhearing anything from Sully that involved her talking to him.” There was no reason for him to doubt what she was saying, and it was to be expected that if such conversations were happening they were happening behind closed doors of some sort. But when Olivia quickly followed up what she had just said with, “Or maybe…oh, never mind, I doubt that’s the case,” all that lack of doubt was instantly regretted.

“Olivia, the love of my life, I can tell exactly when you’re lying to me, and it’s clear you are right now. What have you heard that you’re not telling me?”

“I haven’t heard anything, Chrom! Please don’t accuse me of keeping secrets!” She hung up in a frenzy, not surprising given how flustered she sounded when she was speaking. What was surprising, though, was that she had openly admitted to knowing something beyond what she had said before backing out of the conversation, and now it was Chrom’s job to get that information out of her somehow. Or, perhaps, he could just stop the insanity that was surrounding this entire goose chase and forget about it for the next couple of days.

While his phone was in hand, he gave his calendar a quick look, counting how long it was until they’d all be going home and everything could be put in the past. The conference was five days, not counting the day they’d arrived, and he knew that when they flew back into Ylisstol in three days’ time, Olivia and their kids would be there waiting for him, and Lissa would be there waiting for Lon’qu, and Maribelle would be there for Frederick, and nothing would off or amiss about any of it. He shut the calendar app and locked his phone screen, holding his phone close to his chest for a moment. “I should just let this all go, but I can’t bring myself to do it, not when we don’t know so many things and what we do know and keep talking about is hurting someone that’s here.”

Pocketing his phone, he decided that he’d go down to the lobby and see if any of the other chiefs and commanders were downstairs, willing to talk to someone to get his mind off of the drama for just a moment, but as he got close to the door, he could clearly hear Vaike’s voice on the other side. For a second, he was ready to open the door and scold him for completely disobeying what he’d been told to go do, but then he got to hear a snippet of the conversation and his mind was changed on the matter. “I just don’t know what ya want me t’do ‘bout that, Sully,” Vaike was saying, sounding annoyed. “It’s not like any ‘a that’s my problem, y’know?”

Whatever he was told in response, it only made him more annoyed, as evidenced by how he gave a reply to it. “Stop tellin’ me all this nonsense, it ain’t my problem! If you’ve got problems with it, you tell ‘em to leave, ‘cause I can’t do a damn thing about it!”

It was then that Chrom felt he’d heard enough to make a judgment about what was being said, anger rising within him, so he opened the door and quite nearly had Vaike fall on top of him, the other man having been leaning on it while he talked. After catching him and keeping him upright, as well as watching as Vaike scrambled to hang his call up without any sort of goodbye, Chrom shook his head and sighed. “I thought I told you to go down to the seminar you’re supposed to be at,” he said, disappointment in his voice. “But nope, you’re out here talking to your girlfriend after all.”

“She ain’t my girlfriend, Chrom, she’s just a good pal. And it ain’t like you really care I was talkin’ t’her, you’re just lookin’ to get on the Vaike’s case ‘bout somethin’ else goin’ on. Well guess what, this call won’t even my idea and that’s that.” Defiantly puffing his chest out to make himself look scarier than he normally did, Vaike saw that Chrom’s anger hadn’t ebbed even slightly at the display.

That was because of what Chrom had taken the conversation to mean, he quickly learned. “Yes, I get it, you and Sully aren’t anything more than friends, it’s just a joke I like poking at you both. She gets it, you get it, it’s all in good fun. However, I don’t appreciate you calling my family a problem.” With how stern Chrom’s expression had gotten, it was clear he didn’t take the phrasing lightly, and he wasn’t going to take any explanation without some real facts backing it up.

“I wasn’t callin’ the good parts ‘a your family anything, Chrom. Trust me, ol’ Vaike here knows that Olivia and those kids you’ve got are good people, and they’re not causin’ any problems for Sully, nope not a one. It’s all those other guests she’s got up there that are doin’ the troublemakin’.” His eyes going wide as he thought about what he’d just said, Vaike attempted to walk away as fast as he could, but Chrom reached out and stopped him, not necessarily holding him in place but grabbing him tightly enough that continuing on with walking would do nothing but drag him. “Hey, let go ‘a me! I didn’t do anythin’ wrong!”

“You mentioned other guests. Who else could possibly be up there that she’d be coming to you about?” It was all clicking into place in Chrom’s mind, but he didn’t want to jump to any conclusions and make accusations without being told anything.

“It ain’t my place to be tellin’ ya that information, sorry Chrom. Mostly ‘cause I don’t know much about it myself, and besides, what I do know, I’m sure you’ve been told and are just keepin’ secret yourself.” When he was met with a blank stare, Vaike was forced to retract his assumptive statement, realizing that Chrom honestly had no idea of what he was talking about. “Ya mean you’ve got no idea they’re up there?”

“That who’s up there? I’m the one who drove Olivia, Lucina, and Inigo up there, before they and Sully took me up to where Li—a certain someone lives so I could visit with her and her husband before we left.” Having had to redact the name mid-sentence, Chrom was expecting to be met with some disgusted sound from Vaike having had to hear half of her name. But when he saw Vaike moving one of his hands in a manner that looked like he was beckoning him to continue that train of thought, he was shocked. “Since when could you tolerate someone talking about her and not lash out at them?”

Vaike shrugged, not stopping his hand movement. “Since it’s her brother talkin’ ‘bout her and not some woman-stealin’ asshole, probably.”

“Ignoring the dig at my brother-in-law, I think I’m seeing what you’re getting at here.” Indeed, Chrom was fairly certain he’d gotten enough of the story to make the final judgment on it, all the pieces having come together decently. “You’re telling me that a couple of ladies are up at your girlfriend’s horse camp, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t say that, and she’s not my girlfriend.” His hand motion coming to a stop, Vaike looked like he was about to try leaving again, but he quickly stopped that when he saw how Chrom’s eyes were narrowing at him, expecting him to come clean about everything. “Look, all I know is that Sully’s got some guests who might be those people, but they might not be, and they’re drivin’ her up the wall and she wants them gone. That’s all I know.”

It matched up with the phone call he’d heard that he shouldn’t have, and that was enough to get Chrom to groan at the implications of all this. “Is Maribelle an _idiot_ or what?” he asked, smacking himself in the forehead. “Of all the times we trust her to do one thing, one tiny simple task, she goes and does this!” He didn’t even bother explaining what that thing was as he started walking away, grumbling as he went. “When I see Frederick and Lon’qu next, I have got to share this with them. And Olivia! Olivia knows and she’s not told me a thing! This is ridiculous!”

“H-hey now, what’re you doin’, thinkin’ of tellin’ everyone everything ya just heard?” After making sure that the door to their room was closed tightly, Vaike was left chasing down Chrom, pinning him against the wall when he got the chance. “There’s bound t’be a reason no one’s said anythin’, don’t ya think?”

“There sure is, and I’m fairly certain half of that reason is staring each other in the eyes like a lovesick couple right now,” Chrom replied, his words being spat quite like they were poison in his mouth. It was enough to get Vaike to back off of him, trying to make sense of what he’d just heard, all while he was able to start heading towards the stairs again. “Now come on, you get to be a good person and explain to the others what you now know, because it’s clear their wives, just like mine, aren’t telling them a word.”

“Why does the Vaike have t’be the one tellin’ everyone, why can’t they go straight to the source I heard it from? I’m sure Sully would love to be tellin’ them exactly what she’s been tellin’ me, but it’s not like she knows she should be tellin’ ‘em in the first place!” Vaike was clearly beginning to panic as he continued to follow Chrom on the way to the stairs, not expecting to have been roped into this mess like he had. “C’mon, Chrom, ya have’ta let me not be the one sayin’ any ‘a this!”

Shaking his head as he opened the door to the stairwell, Chrom said, “I can’t let you do that on this one, Vaike. You know far too much for me to let you keep it all secret while they stay in the dark. Now, if by the gods’ graces they find out before we get to them, the level of your involvement can stay hidden until you want to reveal it, but…as if they’re going to come out of their seminars knowing anything more than they did when they entered.”

If he had known how wrong he was going to end up being, perhaps Chrom wouldn’t have made such an agreement, but he had no idea that in the very moment that he had interrupted the call between Vaike and Sully, Robin was calling Frederick to let him know what little he knew about everything, which was interrupted by Maribelle calling Robin, giving Frederick the opportunity to call Sully, who then was able to be heard in the background of Maribelle’s call—or, basically, that rather than there being two people still in the dark about what was happening, it was just going to be one when they all reconvened.

Their meeting spot was the same place in the lobby as always, the three Ylissean men and the one Feroxi officer sitting together in a couple of the chairs off to the side of the room. “Gentlemen, I hope your time in your seminars went over well,” Chrom greeted once everyone was in their seats, aside from Vaike as he stood next to Chrom’s chair while casting anxious glances at the other two. “I only say this to you both, because as it became apparent to me while I was up in the room, a certain third member of this group skipped out on his conference duties today.”

“Is this to come as any sort of surprise?” Lon’qu asked, glaring at Vaike. “Because I would have always painted him as the kind of guy to skip out on any and all commitments as they were presented to him.”

“Calm yourself, Lon’qu. We aren’t here to discuss Vaike, as much as I think it would do us all a bit of a favor to do so.” Giving a cough to ready himself for what he had to say, Chrom was mostly prepared to start talking about what he’d learned when he noticed just how fidgety Frederick was in his seat, distracting him from the point. “Ahem, you seem to have something urgent to take care of, Frederick. Shall I let you handle that first?”

“It’s news that I think we could all use to hear, Chrom.” Frederick’s hands were tapping onto the arms of the chair he was in, a drumming noise that was slowly growing louder with every passing moment. “I hate to interrupt whatever it is you had to tell us, but I feel this could possibly be more important.”

Chrom raised an eyebrow at the guess that it was more important, but as he listened to the beating getting louder he came to the conclusion that there was no speaking over his friend in this situation. “Go right ahead then, Frederick. I know you have a decent level of judgment on things that bother you like this.”

“Thank you, sir. Now, apologies if this sounds entirely unbelievable, but I received a phone call while in my seminar from Robin, and since I am not ever in charge I had to assume that he was calling about other, personal matters. Such as the curious case of my completely disappeared family, that happens to not be so disappeared after all.” The look of worry was fading from Frederick’s face as he was speaking, although it had the effect of making both Chrom and Vaike wonder how far into things he was going to get, while Lon’qu, unaware of everything that had transpired, sat in an almost anxious state as he waited for the rest of the explanation. “He directed me to calling a fellow officer who would be of more help than he would, because he was certain that Maribelle, Lissa, and the boys never made it back to Ylisstol, and it happened that while he was on the call with me, my dearest wife decided to call _him_.”

“She better have said something, anything about where she is and where my Lissa is.” Lon’qu rushed his words, almost slurring them together with how fast he was speaking, leaning forward in his seat with every syllable. “I cannot go any longer without knowing her location, not while…”

He was shushed by Chrom, looking to him as the blue-haired man gave a gesture with his eyes towards Vaike, effectively reminding Lon’qu why finishing his sentence could have been detrimental. That was because Vaike was falling back into his habit of getting on edge at hearing that voice say that name, and he was raring for a fight if the opportunity presented itself. Frederick, not paying attention to what they were doing, moved right along with his story. “He took her call while I went straight to who he’d directed me to, and lo and behold, I can say that I have an answer to the mystery of their lack of calls and ignoring the ones we’ve been placing.”

Once again being the one to speak, Lon’qu was almost doubled over in his seat as he was leaning in closer to where Frederick was seated. “You’re going to share this information right now, correct?” he asked. “I need to know what your wife has done with mi—“

“I think I can answer for you, actually,” Chrom cut in, seeing out of the corner of his eye how Vaike was about to lunge at Lon’qu had he finished his sentence. “The ladies and children seem to have gotten lost on their way down to Ylisstol, making a trip of their own to the horse camp near the border that one of our Ylissean officers is currently running.”

A silence took hold between all four officers as the news settled in. Frederick was swallowing down whatever words he had been planning on using to deliver the news and nodding, while Vaike was turning to look anywhere but at Lon’qu; the Feroxi man was sitting back up, his eyes going wide and darting around as he made sense of that sentence. “Lissa…” he said under his breath, the name barely audible even in the silence, before he raised his voice in time with his hands, grasping the sides of his face. “Gods! Has she no sense? Any day now, any damn day, and she chooses to…” He was to his feet in a flash, once again leaning forward towards Frederick, who didn’t seem prepared to have a Feroxi officer in his face based on how taken aback he was at the sight. “Tell your contact up there to tell your idiotic wife to get her somewhere else, right now! Do you _know_ what could happen at any moment up there?”

“I do know, it’s why I’m just as uneasy about all this as you are right now.” Reaching out to pat Lon’qu on the arm, Frederick tried to force a smile but only resulted in making himself look more worried than he was. “Trust me, I know very well the fear of what could go wrong with a first child, it’s a natural reaction, and—“

The loud “What?” that cut Frederick off in his attempt at calming Lon’qu was one that was entirely expected, to the point that Chrom was already standing to try and keep Vaike from moving from his current spot. It was to no avail, as in his mind, the man now blocking him was someone who’d been withholding information more important and angering than the information he had been keeping from them. “Didja just say _child_? As in, this guy here’s known her for no time at all compared t’how long I’d known ‘er, and they’re havin’ a _child_ together?” That was when he pushed Chrom out of his way and took heavy footsteps towards Lon’qu, eyes narrowing as he moved. “Well, is that the case or not?”

“It might be the case, yes,” Lon’qu coldly replied, turning to face Vaike to see just how angry about this he was. “Does that bother you, knowing that your long-term girlfriend was able to move on and start a family with another man, leaving you behind?”

“Of course it bothers me, everythin’ ‘bout you and her bothers me!” With Chrom once again trying to restrain him, attempting to bind his arms to his sides so that he couldn’t take a swing at Lon’qu, Vaike had to rely on what he did have available to him to get the sheer level of his anger across. He leaned as close in to Lon’qu’s face as he could manage, eyes narrowed so far they were nearly closed. “Why can ya be so smug and happy ‘bout what you’ve done, when ya know that none of it was right?”

“Right, wrong, does it matter? She got through to me, something no woman could ever do before her, and that allowed me to get through to her.” The coldness in his voice fading, Lon’qu was now speaking with more of a condescending tone to get more of a negative reaction out of Vaike, watching as the blond man tried his hardest to break free of what bound him so he could land a punch. “She talked so negatively of the time she spent with you, all the years she felt she was wasting on someone not right for her. I was a breath of fresh air and a way out for Lissa, and now I have given her all she could ever want.”

“I think you should stop,” Chrom said with a grunt, the toll of trying to keep Vaike held back starting to show. “Lon’qu, bragging about what you’ve got isn’t right, nor is it fitting right now. You need to go try and attempt to talk sense into your wife, get away from this scene for a moment while everyone else calms down.”

Lon’qu was going to give a rebuttal to the suggestion, judging by how his mouth slightly opened, but Frederick was quick to second it, his vantage point allowing him to see the extreme emotions in the two men’s faces. “It would be for the best and keep from any fights from breaking out,” he added, sticking an arm out to push Lon’qu back a bit, something he didn’t appreciate. “Go on, I’m sure now that she knows she’s been caught, she’ll answer you. I myself plan on getting through to Maribelle once we’re done here.”

“You…you’re right. I need to speak with Lissa right now, and spending my time being someone’s enemy is not going to allow me to do that.” Before he left he made sure to shoot Vaike an equally-narrowed glare before heading off, taking the stairs up out of the lobby area without so much as looking back.

His arms now being let go of, Vaike’s first instinct was to follow Lon’qu up, but he was quickly spun around by Chrom, so that they were looking each other face-to-face. “You’re quick to anger and fairly dense if you think attempting to attack someone for getting the woman you’d wanted is going to go over well here,” Chrom reminded him, before sighing and collapsing into his chair. “He doesn’t deserve the hatred you’ve got for him, especially not now that we know what we know.”

“Dude’s basically gloatin’ ‘bout gettin' her, you expect me t’just roll over and take it?” Giving the stairwell a quick glance to make sure that Lon’qu hadn’t come back through its door, Vaike crossed his arms over his chest and exhaled loudly. “It ain’t fair, Chrom. It just ain’t.”

“Which part’s not fair about this?” Chrom’s question was oddly pointed, as if this was the last straw in a discussion he’d been dealing with over the past three and a half years. “The part where you’re still hung up on my sister making a decision that she felt was best for her? The part where you keep picking fights with the man she married? The part where you’ve ignored that he’s got a lot more riding on all of this than you do?”

“How about the part where she shoulda been mine still, and it shoulda been me bein’ married t’her, and…” He exhaled another long breath, the admittance of what was wrong not a normal action for Vaike. “I’unno, Chrom, none ‘a this is sittin’ well with the Vaike. Went from not even knowin’ if she was alive to knowin’ that she’s married to the guy she left me for and havin’ his baby in a matter ‘a days, and that’s just…it’s not…I don’t like it. I don’t know how t’handle this.”

“Maybe it’s time that you learn to move on?” The suggestion was genuine, given with the best intentions in mind, so Chrom was a bit offended when Vaike snapped into glaring down at him. “I’m serious, Vaike. It’s not healthy to be this attached after so long, and besides, I think you’ve got a perfect candidate for who to move on with, if you gave her the chance.”

“If you’re talkin’ ‘bout Sully, she ain’t interested and neither am I. Already made her that offer t’get my mind off all this back when this started, and she turned me down then, so what’s stoppin’ her from turnin’ me down again?” Vaike’s glare was softening as he was actually considering what Chrom had just said, but he still looked incredibly upset.

That look of being upset was what made Chrom continue on with his suggestion. “Nothing’s stopping her, but at the same time, maybe you not asking her is not bringing it to the forefront of her mind? It still bothers me that you and Lissa didn’t work out, especially knowing how happy she’d made you, so I’d like to see you find someone who can make you that happy all over again.”

“And you think that’d be Sully? You’re a crazy man, Chrom, y’know that?” Given how angry he’d been moments before, Vaike’s laughter was a bit forced, but as he laughed he began to sound more and more genuine with it. “She’s a great gal, spent some good time with her after everythin’ that happened up at the cabin, but she’s not interested in a guy like ol’ Vaike, and that’s just how it’s gonna be.”

“Give her a chance. She might be what you need to get past all of this.” Standing back up, Chrom gave Vaike’s shoulder a firm pat. “Now come on, let’s go upstairs and see what else we can find out about everything that’s happened. Now that they all know we know, maybe we can get through to everyone.” He looked past Vaike to Frederick, who was still seated in his chair with his phone in his hands. “That means you too, Frederick. You’ll be able to tell us everything Maribelle tells you when you’re done talking to her.”

As he looked at the two men that were standing, Frederick gave a slow nod, bringing himself to his feet. “My conversation with her will perhaps be the worst of all possible calls made today,” he said, “due almost entirely to how much she’s messed up with this decision she’s made regarding the horse camp.”

“And that’s what’s going to make hearing your findings that much more satisfying,” Chrom replied. “Now let’s get upstairs before we cause more of a scene down here than needed. I’m hoping we get everything squared away and the ladies on their way home before I have to break for my meeting, but we’ll just have to see.”

* * *

Thick clouds were building overhead as the horses were put into their stalls for the afternoon, Sully seeming to be a lot stricter about getting them in with a quick pace, no last rides or anything. As the kids who’d been riding were unsaddling their horses and brushing them down, she found herself standing outside the stable’s door, her head tilted back so she could look up at the clouds. “I don’t think this is going to go over very well if things keep up like they have been,” she muttered to herself, closing one eye as she kept the other one focused on the billowing clouds. “If we can’t convince them to leave today…”

“Hey, miss Sully? What are you talking about out here by yourself?” It was Lucina, coming outside to most likely ask some question about the horses, but when she saw the redhead with an eye to the sky, she tilted her head in confusion. “Is it going to storm today? But you said we were going to go into town.”

“We are going into town, kid.” Shaking her head and looking down at Lucina instead of the sky, Sully gave a small laugh. “I didn’t borrow a truck for being up here for nothing. I’m more worried about our unwanted visitors getting home than I am worried about us getting into town. Do you think having weather reports going full blast would give them the idea to get the hell out of here?” She wasn’t answered because Lucina didn’t know how to answer and therefore she went back into the stables, saying something about how they were going into town to her brother. “Ugh, kids. Don’t know how anyone can stand having them, even if they’re not as bad when they’re older.”

The next door that opened was the one into the cabin itself, Olivia stepping outside to have an eerily similar conversation with Sully to the one she’d just had with Lucina. “The radio we have on inside is saying that it’s going to snow, are you sure we’ll be able to go into town for dinner tonight if it does? Feroxi snowstorms tend to turn into blizzards quickly, and—“ She quickly stopped speaking when Sully whipped her head around to give her a very exasperated look. “—oh, I didn’t mean to act like I know what’s going on better than you.”

“We’ll be able to go into town.” Pointing at the truck parked in front of the cabin, Sully continued, “I didn’t trade vehicles with Vaike for the summer for nothing, you know. I’m not completely stupid when it comes to riding out snowstorms up here.” Her hand dropped, motioning towards another vehicle that, by all means, still shouldn’t have been there. “Maribelle, on the other hand, has no idea what she’s going to be stuck in if she doesn’t get the damn clue that she needs to leave today, preferably when we do.”

“It’s not Maribelle who’s holding up their progress, and we both know it.” Closing the door so that the conversation wouldn’t be heard inside, Olivia came fully outside and walked to be standing next to Sully, her head barely coming up to her shoulder when she arrived. “I feel absolutely horrible for Lissa, being dragged here and now not wanting to finish going home. If we hadn’t been so insistent to the men yesterday, I almost truly believe Lon’qu would have flown home to come get her himself.”

“He should have, it would have gotten everyone out of my hair when I didn’t ask for them to be there.” Lifting her arm to prop it on Olivia’s head, Sully gave a deep sigh when the other woman squirmed underneath her arm. “What, do you not appreciate me talking about them? Didn’t take you for the kind of woman to care about people like that.”

“One of them happens to be my sister-in-law, and she happens to be the reason that they’re still here and not gone like Maribelle had said they would be.” Olivia bit her lip as she thought about something she could say, then accepted that it was something nice to throw into the conversation. “I’m sure that, if I were the one driving instead of Maribelle, Lissa would be all for going with. I think it’s the family thing. I really, truly think she’s scared of being without any family member at this time.”

“Okay, I can see that, but fact remains that this isn’t anything close to the damn kind of place someone that close to pumping out a kid needs to be.” Sighing again, Sully moved her arm so that she could use both hands to push Olivia back towards the door. “You go tell them to get a move on, I know it’s not going to work if I do it.”

Reluctantly, Olivia gave in to what she was being asked to do, but before she went back inside, she gave a glance at the other woman and frowned. “What are you going to do if they don’t go?”

“Them not leaving’s not my problem, I’ve been telling them for days, all the men were telling them all day yesterday, the weather’s telling them today, if they ignore all that they’re idiots and it’s not my fault.” Waving towards the door, Sully watched as Olivia went inside, leaving her out in the oddly cold afternoon on her own. “Gods, why’s it always me that gets wrapped up in this stuff? I didn’t ask for them to come, they know they should be long gone by now, but nope, they’re here and making everything a huge mess.”

She was looking up at the sky once more, everything now obscured by the darkening clouds, when she heard what sounded like a horrified screech come from inside the stable. It was enough to put her into a momentary panic, not wanting any kid to have gotten hurt while she was in charge, so she ran inside to check to see if everyone was okay. Standing in there, among the two older children who had every right to be there were two little dark-haired boys, one of whom was crying while the other was yelling gibberish words at a horse. “What the hell happened in here?” she asked over the sounds of the crying. “Lucina, Inigo, did either of one of you let these gremlins in here without supervision?”

“No ma’am,” Inigo answered, while Lucina was crouching down to try and comfort the kid that was crying. “I was finishing up with brushing my horse and the door opened and they came running out and I guess they wanted to play but the horses are hungry.” He looked down at what his sister was doing, her holding a small hand with reddened fingers within hers. “I bet kiddy fingers look like hay to a hungry horse.”

“I think we’re lucky that the horse didn’t actually try eating Brady’s fingers,” Lucina added, squeezing the injured hand a bit and making Brady cry harder for a moment until he caught on that she was being tender with his hand. “He just got a good nip. Kind of like the time the day we got here when the horse tried eating Mother’s hair.”

“B-b-but Ma says horsies are nice.” Choking words out through his tears, Brady looked at the horse that had bit him and started wailing again. “That horsey is not nice!” Coupled with that cry was an unintelligible one from his younger brother, the smaller child deciding that he was going to take action against the horse with his own fist.

Within seconds it went from one crying kid and one yelling one to two crying kids, as the horse did the exact thing to the second hand that approached its mouth that it had to the first. “Why did you have to go and do that, Freddy?” Lucina asked, letting go of Brady’s hand so she could take his younger brother’s instead. “Now you’re going to be hurting too…”

“And people want to say that Maribelle’s a capable mother. Yeah, okay, watch how she lets her kids act at a horse camp and that’ll change everyone’s minds.” Shaking her head at what she’d seen, Sully made sure to check with Lucina that she’d be able to handle the crying kids before she chose to go find the woman who should have been in charge of them. When the girl said she could take care of it, that was when she went inside through the connecting door, the background noise of the kids crying setting the scene as she entered the cabin. She was greeted with the sight of Olivia down on her knees in front of Lissa, telling her something, while Maribelle was sitting on the counter, legs crossed in front of her as she talked on the phone, not fazed even slightly that both of her kids could be heard crying in the background.

“We still haven’t left yet, but we’re planning on it being very soon,” Maribelle was saying to the person on the other end of her call. “Right now the boys are getting their last words in with the horses and Lissa’s getting mentally ready for the rest of the trip, but we’ll be on the road soon and home in a matter of hours. Mmhmm, yes, I know we should have left yesterday but she wasn’t feeling up to it, I wasn’t going to force my best friend into something she didn’t want to do.”

“And making her come up here was something she _did_ want?” Sully asked, breaking Maribelle’s concentration from her call. She nearly fell forward off the countertop, her only saving grace being how she gripped the edge with her knees to keep her from toppling over. As she was apologizing to the person she was talking to for screaming into their ear, Sully looked over at the scene by the chair. “Well, Lissa, was it? Did you want to come here and do nothing but sit there and complain for days?”

“You’re not helping with me getting her to want to leave by doing that, I hope you know,” Olivia said as Lissa’s head turned to face who had addressed her. “Now she’s going to want to stay here to make you pay for that, I guarantee it.”

However, when Lissa did speak, she ignored what Olivia had said to merely answer Sully’s question. “I didn’t want to come here, not even a little bit. I don’t know what kind of person you take me for, but I definitely don’t find fun in being hours from anywhere while super pregnant, and especially not here. I’d rather be anywhere but here, ever.”

“That’s about what I expected you to say.” A rude thought crossed her mind, something that she knew she shouldn’t dare vocalize with so many people around, but she was working off of days of frustration that her temporary horse camp had been overrun by people she hadn’t invited; the least she could do was make one nasty comment here and there. “You don’t want to be here because all you can think of when you’re in this place is how this is where your last lover was when you decided to play dirty with him. This place reeks of bad memories for you, and it’s driving you crazy, isn’t it?”

“Me not liking this place has nothing to do with Vaike, okay? I’ve moved so far past him, I don’t need you bringing him up when you’re trying to put me in my place.” Something about what she’d heard made Lissa feel the need to bring herself to her feet, pushing Olivia out of her way as she did. She slowly, almost uncomfortably walked over to where Sully was standing, putting her hands on her hips to support the sides of her stomach as she glared the woman down. “It seems like _you’re_ the one who can’t handle me being here because of my connection with him!”

“That’s not even close to the truth, damn it!” If the person trying to intimidate her wasn’t a small and pregnant woman, there would have been a chance that Sully would have pushed her down, but due to circumstances she didn’t even consider that as a possibility. “My problem with you being here is that you’re one wrong move away from having a kid here in this cabin, hours from the nearest town with a storm on the way!”

“What’s a big, bad storm got to do with anything? Oh, look, I’m so worried about a little storm making things a bit icky outside, ha!” After giving Sully the dirtiest look she could muster, and pushing past Olivia to get back into her chair, Lissa laughed more at what she’d just said. “We’ll leave when we do, I promise, but it’s not because I don’t like this place or because of any stupid storm. It’s because I have to do what’s best for me and my O’wain, and that’s clearly not being here any longer.”

Rolling her eyes, Sully said, “That’s great to hear, but why’d you sit back down if—“

“Because I’m not leaving right yet, obviously!” Curbing her laughter, Lissa looked down at where Olivia was still kneeling on the floor, a bit put off by what had happened. “We’re not going until you guys go, so that it’s not some big emotional goodbye scene when I know we’re just going to see each other again in a few days.”

“—I’ll accept that answer right now, but if you’re pulling the wool over my eyes on this one I’m not going to be as accepting later.” Sully cracked her knuckles to try and show how serious she was, but all she got was an interrupting laugh from Maribelle, who was still on the phone with someone. “Okay, what’s so funny there, Maribelle? Got yourself a damn fine conversation going on, or what?”

“I’ll have you know that I am having a wonderful chat with my husband right now, and I don’t need you getting sassy with me about it.” Hopping off the counter, it was then that Maribelle realized that there was familiar crying coming into the cabin through the still-open door. “Oh no, the boys! Gods, what happened to them out there, they were supposed to be saying their goodbyes!”

As she bustled out of the cabin, everyone’s eyes following her out, Sully couldn’t help herself when it came to answering the question despite her not being there to hear it. “It’s called neither of those kids having enough common sense to know not to feed a horse their fingers.” While she laughed about it, Olivia came to her feet and also went to go outside to check on children, even though she was there to keep an eye on the older pair rather than the younger ones. In doing that, though, she left the cabin to just Sully and Lissa, neither of whom were going to be able to talk to the other without another argument brewing.

In the end, the time they were left alone was very short, as Olivia was coming back inside with both of her children following in a matter of seconds, the two kids visibly dirty from their adventures with the horses. “You both go clean up in the bathroom in the building we’ve been staying in, so that we can get on our way to dinner before the weather turns bad,” Olivia said to her blue-haired kids, both of them nodding at their mother’s command.

They made it as far as crossing the cabin to the front door, Lucina opening it so they could leave, before they were stopped by something. “Mother, it’s snowing out!” Inigo called, turning while his sister still held the door open and waving for Olivia to come take a look. “It’s the middle of summer and it’s snowing!”

“S-snowing?” Lissa repeated, giving a worried glance over towards Sully, who was laughing once again at the turn of events. “I’ve been through three Feroxi summers before this and it’s never snowed on us! Why’s it got to snow now?”

“Weather radio’s been on all day warning of this happening and you just now realized it’s legitimate? Gods help that kid when he’s born, and hopefully the weather doesn’t go sour in the next few minutes before you finally leave this place so that he’s not born here.” Covering her mouth to stop her laughter, Sully waited until Olivia and the kids were gone again to speak—but when the front door closed, the one from the stable reopened, Maribelle and her sons coming inside, the boys both sniffling from their crying fits. “Are you kidding me? Giving me the chance to make one rude comment and taking it away just like that. What do you want?”

“I want to let you know that it’s unacceptable that you’re running a place where the horses will bite kids. Nowhere in Ylisse is there somewhere as shoddily-ran as here, and you’re a horrible person to have in charge of anything.” Maribelle’s face was oddly dark as she spoke, but when Sully, her jaw dropped a bit at the negativity coming from the other woman’s mouth, decided she was going to give a rebuttal, there was a sharp laugh and a smile from Maribelle instead. “I’m just joking with you. The boys were in the wrong, not your horse, and we’ll certainly be back to visit again sometime.”

Her face falling at the last few words, Sully shook her head. “No need for that, Maribelle. You keep visiting the stables there around Ylisstol until those kids are older, I don’t think this place has ever been for kids quite that young.” She then glanced over at Lissa, who was once again bringing herself up to her feet. “Or kids as unborn as that one.”

“Don’t worry, I have _zero_ intentions of ever dropping by this place ever again. Far too out of the way to make any sense to come here when traveling between my two homes,” Lissa said in response to the look she was given. “O’wain will just have to learn to ride a horse from somewhere else. Or never at all. Not like I ever learned to ride, you know.”

“If I wasn’t trying to get you all out of here, I’d suggest throwing you on the back of a horse to see if we could induce labor, but now’s not the time for those jokes.” Giving herself one loud laugh at what she’d said, Sully sighed and continued, “It’s good to see that you’re finally, seriously getting out of this place, now that you’ve seen that it does actually snow here in the summer and you don’t want to be trapped up here if it gets bad.”

“It doesn’t snow like this anywhere else in Ferox in the summer,” Lissa retorted, as she was heading towards the door closest to the cars. “I never would have guessed this is a thing.”

Sully actually had to restrain herself from snorting at that comment. “Welcome to the mountains, sweetheart. It’s a whole different world up here.”

“A whole different world that I totally didn’t sign up for being part of.” Waving for Maribelle and the boys to follow her, Lissa was at the door, opening it and shivering when the snowy, cold air hit her skin. “Oh gods it’s _freezing_ out here! Why don’t I have a jacket or something to keep me warm?”

“If the circumstances were a bit different, I’m sure someone here would have one to loan you, but…” Maribelle’s voice trailed off as she tried mimicking the current state of what Lissa’s stomach looked like, but she ended up nearly knocking one of her children out cold with an errant hand. To try and keep the crying in the cabin to a minimum, she scooped that kid up and pushed the other one towards the door, the three of them and Lissa going outside together to presumably start getting in the car.

A few minutes later, re-entering the cabin through the actual front door, Olivia and her children were bundled up with long pants and jackets, all ready to head out into down for themselves. “It’s really starting to come down out there,” Olivia remarked, although she was aware that it wasn’t going to change Sully’s mind on what they were going to do. “I’m worried for them on their ride home in that small car with the weather like this.”

“As long as they leave when we do, there’s nothing to worry about.” Already Sully was rushing them towards the other door, stepping outside into the snow and seeing that it was already collecting in high places, including on the windshields of the vehicles. That was where she saw Maribelle still standing, trying to brush the snow off her car so that she could drive. “Hey, you ladies be safe on your way home, and be sure to tell everyone when you’ve made it,” she reminded them, getting a thumbs-up from a reddened and freezing hand. “That includes at least one of us here, so we don’t have to harass any Plegian-trapped guys for the details of your arrival.”

She wasn’t given a response other than that hand gesture, so she shrugged and hopped up into the truck, turning it on and starting its warmup as everyone else who was riding with her got into it. She did have to get out and brush snow off for herself, but she made sure that she didn’t do that until after Maribelle had gotten into her own car, and she sure did a quicker job of it than Maribelle had, even though the truck was bigger and higher off the ground. With the pace of the snowfall picking up seemingly by the minute, she didn’t want to waste any time at all, and that meant not waiting to escort the other ladies out of the mountain valley when they were leaving, instead believing that they’d just follow them right out—and with the fact that they were going separate ways, there wasn’t any reason to actually wait around for them to go.

It was a long two hours to the closest town, not really lengthened by the presence of the snow falling around them, but rather lengthened by the silence that filled the truck. No one was speaking and they had the radio on silent as to not hear anything that would make anyone consider asking to turn back. When they made the turn off the road that would have eventually taken them to the main highway into the heart of Ferox, instead cutting through more mountain passes to get to a small town nestled at the base of one of the taller peaks, Olivia made motions as if she wanted to speak, but she never said a word.

That was something she explained once they were beginning to see the lights of a town on the horizon, illuminating the snow that was quickly falling all around them. “This reminds me a lot of when I was a child living in Ferox,” she said, her eyes jumping around to look at the big snowflakes falling from the sky. “I never experienced a July snowstorm like this, but I heard of them and always wondered what they’d look like.”

“Funny how you know they’re a thing, yet no one bothered telling that sister-in-law of yours that they are. She seemed so offended when she heard it was snowing. Like, what the hell? It’s the Feroxi mountains, of course it’s going to snow whenever it damn well feel like snowing.” Sully was trying to not let the lights on the snow distract her as she drove, and talking while driving was a pretty big distraction. “See, I learned that lesson pretty well the time I got stuck up here because of avalanches. Taught me to always have a big truck with me when I’m up here, no matter the season.”

“It’s a good thing to do, I will agree.” Olivia looked to Sully, before turning to check on her kids in the back seat, Lucina and Inigo both staring out their windows at the snow. “Say, children, are you excited about what we’re doing tonight? A real, genuine Feroxi dining experience! It’s been years since I last had one of these, the last one I remember is from when I had just met your father for the first time…”

“Gods, Mother, please spare us the cute story about you meeting Father,” Lucina said, while Inigo mimed throwing up. “It’s probably really adorable but does everything have to go back to meeting him? You said that when we were driving to the camp too, that the last time you were down that road was when you first met him.”

“When you find yourself your perfect soulmate, you’ll be remembering the same things about them too!” Olivia’s voice was a lot more expressive than normal, this being the first time that Sully had really seen her come out of her typically withdrawn shell. “I’m just really happy that we’re getting to do this, and I hope that by the end of the night everyone wants to get to do this again soon!”

Inigo stopped his miming long enough to get a word out that wasn’t surrounded by fake retching noises, telling his mother simply “no thank you” before going right back to his young boy-like behavior. Lucina glanced at him when he spoke, nodding eagerly along with his sentiment, but like the good older sister she was she elaborated on his thought a bit. “Mother, we came up here first to see Aunt Lissa and then to go ride horses. We’re not going to come back up for some food, and only some food.”

“We’ll have to drive up here more frequently to visit the baby, you know,” Olivia reminded, shaking a finger at her daughter, “and I know that Lon’qu would absolutely love taking us all out for a meal every time we visit.”

“Sheesh, with how much you’re gushing over food right now, I’d think I’m taking someone completely different out for the night.” Actually, it was three distinct people that came to Sully’s mind when she spoke, the first one not sharing something in common with the other two. And it was just thinking about the first one that was beginning to make her face feel a bit odd, as if she was starting to pick up color in her cheeks just from merely having a passing thought about the man. Under her breath, she told herself, “C’mon now, don’t start acting like you’ve got feelings for someone, because that’s a damn lie and you know it.”

Ignoring the part where the driver was muttering to herself, Olivia sat back properly in her seat and gave a curious glance to said driver. “Who would gush like this about food on a normal day? I’m only doing this because of what _kind_ of food we’re getting.”

“Trust me, I’m sure if you’ve ever listened to a single word of Chrom talking about food-related work functions, you’ve heard about the guys,” Sully replied, casually leaving out the part where those two weren’t even the first man she thought of. “I don’t know what the hell their problems are, but one’s a human trash can and the other’s got a sweet tooth big enough to make all candy shop owners rich. And both of them would talk anyone’s ear off about any sort of food if they were given the chance.”

“Oh, in that case, I know who you’re talking about. You’re right, Chrom mentions them an awful lot when he’s complaining about whose turn it is to supply food for shifts and whatnot, always saying that everyone has to bring double what’s required to satiate their hungers.” Olivia clicked her tongue as she shook her head. “Honestly, they need someone in their lives to cook for them, so that they’re not being a burden on everyone else to do it.”

“Like that’ll happen. Guys are so dimwitted about love that…” Whatever it was that Sully was going to say, she stopped herself mid-sentence to pull into the parking lot of a mostly empty restaurant, moving past her statement to tell everyone to get out and head inside. She knew exactly what she had been about to say, but she felt she needed to stop herself not to bark directions but rather to keep herself from sounding hypocritical. How was she going to chide men about their lack of love knowledge when she was actively in the same boat as them, more or less?

There was no reason for her to even fathom getting away with that, so she simply stopped herself from saying it. Besides, they were at the restaurant and there were many more important things to begin focusing on, most importantly getting a table and getting their dinner started. She decided to play the role of spectator on the meal, watching as Olivia was still attempting to get her children enthused about where they were and what they were doing. “I have never been to this place in particular, but there’s a spot similar to this near one of the great arenas that I spent many, many nights eating and drinking with friends after dancing competitions,” she said, gesturing to the menus laid out in front of her children. “And let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like dining on well-cooked food with a strong glass of wine to pair it with.”

“Mother, neither of us can drink,” Lucina reminded her mother, sighing as she looked at how their attention was being directed towards the wine listings instead of anything food-related. “You’re not going to drink either, are you?”

“There’s nothing stopping me tonight, and besides, on someone else’s dime for dinner, I think I can spare the expense to buy a nice glass or two.” Laughing as she flipped the page of the menu to one more appropriate for Lucina and Inigo to be looking at (although Inigo’s attention was focused on looking at people at other tables, until his sister hit him in the ribs to bring him back), Olivia turned her own eyes to the wine menu, giving a couple of the choices a hard tap. “You don’t mind if I try these things, do you, Sully?”

“Like you said, I’m paying for the meal, you buying yourself some wine doesn’t bother me at all.” Smiling at Olivia while she looked far too excited to be told she could do something as menial as buying alcohol, Sully made it a point to look at her own menu to see if they’d made any changes since the last time she’d been there. She wouldn’t dare consider herself a regular of the place, but she did pop in almost every time she was up at the horse camp, only one instance of that not being true coming to her mind. It was as she realized that was the _only_ time she had come to Ferox and not stopped in for a meal that their server for the night came over, a young lady who seemed a bit frazzled to be working.

She quickly explained that said appearance came from it being her first shift by herself, a fitting night for it as it was snowing and people weren’t going to be swarming the restaurant. Her taking drink orders took a matter of seconds, although she did have to ask Olivia several times about which wine she wanted first, the pink-haired woman suddenly retreating into her shell when she realized she’d ordered three glasses at once. “Don’t worry, Mother, I’m sure she’s heard that before,” Inigo said, watching intently as the server walked from their table. “And if she hasn’t, then you were her first and that’s okay.”

“Inigo, please stop trying to be reassuring while watching a woman twice your age doing her job. You’re an awfully silly boy to think that you’re being helpful with that.” Olivia reached to grab her son to turn his attention elsewhere, but he ducked under the table to avoid her, leading her to stand up and bend over, looking under the table. “What kind of behavior is this? You’re far too old to be hiding when being scolded.”

Burying her head in her arms as they crossed on the table, Lucina remarked, “And this is how Mother is before a single glass of wine. Tonight is going to be something else, and I wish Father was here to see it.”

“You don’t think that he’d need to be here to control her, do you?” Sully asked, surprising herself that she was going to such a younger person for any sort of question, but when Lucina shook her head and explained that she just wanted her father to _see_ things, not get involved, she remembered exactly why it was she needed to ask this girl anything. “Damn, and here I was thinking your dad ruled everything with a controlling fist. Good to see that he lets his wife do whatever the hell she wants with no consequences.”

“Father likes it when Mother starts getting playful and having a good time, like she is tonight,” Lucina said to continue her explanation. “I mean, that’s what they say about…ugh, about their first date. At a place like this.”

“Ooh, Lucy, I wouldn’t say that so loud,” Inigo said as he was still under the table, his mother’s attention focused on getting him out from underneath there. “You might get her started all over again.”

The girl perked her head up, leaning back to see her brother’s brown eyes shining at her from his hiding place. “And getting her started would be a bad thing right now because…? It’ll get her from trying to make you act your age.”

“That’s a good point.” Inigo put a finger to his lips and tapped it to them a few times as he contemplated accepting his sister’s plan, before shrugging and dropping his hand. “Go ahead, see if it’ll work. Might take the pretty server coming back, though.”

“Don’t think I don’t hear you children conspiring against me, plotting to get me off on a tangent and forget that I have been trying to raise respectable and age-appropriately-behaved children.” Olivia reached under the table, grabbing the back of Inigo’s shirt and pulling him out from under the table, much to his disappointment. The look shared between the siblings as he sat back in his chair, him looking sheepish and Lucina smacking her forehead at how he’d been caught, was enough to make Sully laugh a bit, earning raised eyebrows from Olivia herself. “Are you finding my parenting struggles hilarious?”

Whatever Sully’s answer was initially going to be, it changed the moment she saw, out of the corner of her eye, the server coming back with their drink orders in hand. “No, but I think I’m going to be the ‘responsible’ one at this table tonight, if your relaxed behavior already is any indication of how you’re going to get. And damn it, I don’t know how to be a parent to kids, let alone kids _and_ their mother.”

“Don’t worry, miss Sully, we’ll make sure we’re on our best behavior once Mother’s had enough to drink,” Lucina assured, smiling at everyone present, but making sure to wink in her brother’s direction, even though Inigo was back to watching their server and paying no attention to what was happening at the table.

The meal hadn’t even started and it was already arguably the best part of the time that this family had been up at the camp, due to how much of a fun disaster it was showing itself to be. As she watched Olivia start drinking her expensive and fancy Feroxi wine, while placing extravagant-sounding orders for herself and her children, Sully’s mind started to wander back to who they’d left behind at the camp, wondering if they were anywhere close to making it home at that point. In good weather, it was a few hours’ drive back to Ylisstol, so they were most likely nearly back, the skyline of the city lit up on the horizon for them and quickly approaching. She shouldn’t have been needing to think about them and where they were, because they never should have been a worry on her mind, and not even the sounds of Olivia slowly losing herself to the alcohol content in her wine was enough to fully pull her away from the worry that something could go wrong for those other ladies.

Nothing was going to go wrong, they were going home and avoiding what would undoubtedly be the worst part of this summer snowstorm, and that meant that there was no reason at all for Sully to be worrying about people she didn’t even particularly care for. Or, at least, one person she didn’t care for and one person that she tolerated only because of who she was married to. That thought, about why she put up with Maribelle, did a wonderful job of dragging her back into her current position, entertaining the wife and children of the man who ran the police station she worked at. Why was she okay with Olivia and these kids, enjoying them and their company, even though Chrom was countries away, while she had barely been able to handle the time that Maribelle and her kids had been at the camp? It wasn’t that Maribelle was _that_ bad of a person, she’d honestly done some shady and shifty things but she always had her heart in the right place while doing them, even if that was the exact reason a lot of her actions ended up breaking other people’s hearts.

“Are you sure your water there wasn’t spiked or something?” Olivia softly asked, her voice cracking from giggles she was unable to contain midway through her second glass of wine. “You’re turning awfully red at nothing at all, Sully. Can’t have our designated driver getting buzzed on spiked water.”

Bringing a hand to her face, Sully let out a genuinely surprised and shocked gasp at what she felt, how unbearably hot her cheeks had gotten just by vaguely thinking about a certain event in her life. “Haven’t taken a sip of anything,” she said, an utterance that was entirely true as she hadn’t once even considered drinking the water she’d ordered. “Must be the sweater I’m wearing or something, got me hot as hell.”

“If it’s not a drink, maybe you’ve gotten sick or something? Here, let me mommy you for a little bit.” Still giggling as she stood up and leaned across the table to put the back of her hand to Sully’s forehead, Olivia blinked a few times at the lack of fever she felt. “Huh, it seems you’re not sick at all. That’s odd.”

“Even when you’re drinking you still manage to be a doting mother, and a nuisance by doing just that.” Pushing the hand touching her away, Sully watched as Olivia sat back down, looking confused as she tried to make sense of what she’d just experienced. “It’s not a fever, and it’s not alcohol in my water. It’s something pointless that we’re not going to dwell on here, because why the hell would we do that? My life’s boring, easy as that.”

Olivia was putting her hand on own forehead in what looked like an attempt to check her own temperature, but as quickly as she did it she turned her hand around and smacked herself, running her palm down over her face. “Just because I’ve had a little to drink tonight doesn’t mean I don’t recognize all the tell-tale signs of being in love, my friend,” she said, making Sully tense up where she sat. “You have the worst case of being lovesick that I’ve seen in…well, in over three years!”

“Come on now, don’t start comparing me to that woman, will you? She was too quick to change who she loved, it’s not like I ever loved anyone to begin with, nor do I love anyone now.” Her face still red with no signs of it fading away anytime soon, it was pretty clear to anyone within viewing distance that Sully was lying through her teeth as she tried to convince Olivia otherwise, but despite her insistence that she was right, the pink-haired woman knew that there was more to the story than the denial was letting on.

Had it not been for the timely reappearance of their server with their meals and another glass of wine, the grilling might have gone on for a lot longer, but it seemed that the server was well-aware of what was happening and she was just trying to throw the unwilling participant in the conversation a bone. That plan would have worked had there not been two children present for the meal, both of whom were old enough to pick up on what was subtly trying to be swept under the rug. “Mother, are you sure that three glasses of wine with dinner is a good idea?” Lucina asked halfway through the meal, setting her fork down as she watched her mother drinking down said third glass. “You might start getting really question-y towards miss Sully and I don’t think she’ll like that.”

“Oh come on, Lucina, listening to all those questions is a lot more fun than you think it is,” Inigo cut in, stopping their mother before she could say a word and earning a glare from his sister. “I like listening to when people talk about love and stuff. It makes me excited for when I’m old enough to have secret crushes everyone knows about.”

“Everyone knows about all the crushes you have right now,” she retorted, slamming her hand down across the table to try and startle him into silence. “And with you distracting me, how am I going to keep Mother from being a bother?”

“I don’t think your mother could ever be a real bother, not unless she decided to start throwing names around at me.” Speaking with a laugh as she watched the kids bicker, Sully looked to Olivia right as she finished her glass of wine, smiling as she did. “Which, let’s be honest with ourselves, I think the damn alcohol’s going to wipe her mind of—“

“You’ve been interested in him for years, please stop lying to yourself.” The words were soft spoken, but at the first syllable Sully had fallen silent as to not talk over Olivia, although by the end of the sentence she wished she had done otherwise. “Everyone knows it, especially those of us who’ve heard the story, so please do yourself a favor and do something about it.”

“I should’ve just kept talking so I didn’t have to hear that,” she grumbled, looking away from Olivia and back at her plate of food in front of her. “I don’t like anyone, am not interested in anyone, if you want to believe that being trapped in a place for a week with a guy makes a romance happen, you need to do yourself a favor and leave me the hell alone about it.”

She’d figured that would put an end to the topic, but as the kids looked on Olivia got the biggest, completely drunken grin on her face and said, “I didn’t mention anything about being stuck somewhere with someone and liking them for it. Good to hear that you’re always thinking about dear old Vaike, though.”

“Y-you didn’t, and neither did…oh gods damn it I did.” Sighing as she began to rub at her temples, Sully shook her head at what trap she’d just walked straight into. “I guess we can pin this one on everything that’s happened the past couple days, eh?”

“You can try, sure, but we all know the truth.” Still grinning, Olivia stood up from the table once more, walking around it to drape herself over Sully’s shoulders and give a dramatic flourish with one arm, nearly knocking over every drink on the table as she did. “Stop being difficult and just accept it, you’ll make him—and basically anyone who feels bad for him—feel a whole lot happier.”

“Get off of me! I don’t need you pressuring me into dating some guy that I’m not really…er, that I don’t need to be dating. He doesn’t need or want me, I turned him down when he tried to use me as a rebound and he hasn’t asked since so I’m sure he’s moving on in his own way.” Sully shook Olivia off of her, sending the drunk woman back to her seat where she collapsed with a loud huff. “Hey now, don’t be getting your damn panties in a bunch that I won’t get with that guy. Been single all my life this far, don’t need to change that now.”

“How’s it that she wants to be single?” Inigo asked, his voice hushed and pointed towards his sister, who was leaning in to hear him. “That’s so weird.”

Lucina shrugged as she gave her reply. “I don’t know, but I think Mother’s got a good idea going here with trying to push her into doing something. We should help however we can, don’t you think?” As her brother nodded back at her, her face broke out into an excited smile as she shook one hand a little bit, her fingers spread so that it looked like she was holding something vaguely phone-shaped. “I’ve got an idea, but we need to be anywhere but here…”

“My time to shine, then.” Clearing his throat, Inigo jumped to his feet and started looking around like he was in a panic, a complete turnaround from how he’d just been acting. “Mother, something about dinner’s making me feel quite bad, can we go please? My insides feel like they’re on fire!”

It was a painfully obvious faked behavior, but Olivia was just drunk enough to not recognize it as such and so she went straight from “romantic instigator” to “doting mother” once more, getting up and trying to baby her son to the point that he was visibly regretting pulling the stunt he had. Despite his best efforts to convince her that he wasn’t actually sick and was just playing a joke, she wasn’t hearing a single word of it, swearing off all the romantic talk until she knew that her child was going to be fine. That put a rush on the end of the meal, everyone having to box up the rest of their food to eat it at a later point (minus Inigo’s food, because Olivia refused to keep what had supposedly harmed her son), and after paying both tabs and getting well-wishes for safe travels from the server, they were on their way outside to the truck.

The snow falling outside was visible through the glass front door to the restaurant, accumulating quickly on the ground and everything else, including the truck. “Damn, it’s coming down a lot faster than I figured it would’ve been,” Sully said to herself as she unlocked the truck’s doors to let everyone in while she cleared the snow off the windows. “Gotta make sure we get back safely, can’t figure that they’ll have plowed any roads up here or anything and it’s dark as hell.”

“Aren’t there chains for the truck tires?” Olivia asked as she opened her own door and sent a cascading shower of snow onto herself and her seat. She didn’t seem to be bothered even slightly about the bone-chilling cold, though. “Like, isn’t that one of the things about this truck that makes it so great? Chrom borrowed those chains once, pretty sure.”

Sully sighed, looking towards the truck bed that was absolutely filled with snow. “Yeah, there’s chains,” she replied, rolling her eyes at her own stupidity on the matter, “but they’re in the back, in a box, and I’m not digging all night to get them out. As long as I go slow while driving, we’ll make it back without them and I’ll fish ‘em out in the morning or after the storm passes, in case we need them to get back into town for whatever reason.”

“Okay, if you’re sure that’s what you want to do, I’m not going to tell you not to.” Brushing the snow off her seat so that she could get in when she was ready, Olivia actually ended up doing the same thing when she opened the back door to let the kids file in, covering herself and half of the back seat in snow as well. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to be out in this weather and be bothered by the cold.”

“L-like us, Mother?” Lucina asked, shivering while she waited to be let in, her brother wrapping her up in a hug to try and warm her a bit despite him being just as cold. “We-we’re freezing out here! Let us in!”

She laughed, knocking as much of the snow off the seat as she could before motioning for her kids take their seats. “You must’ve inherited your lack of cold tolerance from your father. Growing up in the Feroxi winters makes a woman strong, something you didn’t seem to pick up.” She still laughed even as both her children looked at her with varying levels of shock at what she’d just said, and after she’d closed their door on them and gotten in her own seat, the conversation went on, as evidenced by how loud laughter could be heard on occasion.

But Sully wasn’t trying to listen in on them, having closed her own door to keep from getting any more snow in it than she had when she’d opened it to get the brush out. She was keeping to herself, her thoughts switching between curses at the change in weather to about something that had happened during the meal that she really wished she didn’t keep thinking back to. Was it really obvious that she may have had a thing for someone once upon a time (ignoring that she still might have had that thing now)? She could have handled the accusations of romantic inclinations a lot better than she had, she knew, but she was a brash woman and she wasn’t one to take anything like that lightly.

It wasn’t like there was anything there between them, anyway. He was always doing his own thing, spending his time focusing on what he wanted, and she was constantly getting pulled from her proper job to come up to the Ferox mountains to help at a horse camp that could very well end up being her own at some point. The most they had going for them was the occasional shift working together where they could talk, and the fact that he trusted her enough to lend her his truck whenever she needed it. Those two had always been constants, though, and they weren’t anything new to be dwelling on. Still, the thought about how she’d been quick to assume that’s who was being implied lingered on her mind, despite her best efforts to push it away in exchange for thinking solely about the weather.

By the time she’d cleared the truck off well enough to drive, she’d come to the conclusion that romance was completely stupid and she wasn’t going to think about it once while driving. It was a nice decision to make, but it was one that was hard to stick to, especially when Olivia, still in her wine-drunk state, would start bringing up what had happened at dinner all over again. “So when are you going to tell him?” she asked on her third attempt at bringing that to the forefront of conversation, the first two times being less pointed questions. “I bet he’d love to hear it someday.”

“I’m not going to tell him anything, because there’s nothing to tell him,” Sully replied, gripping the steering wheel a bit tighter to try and keep herself rooted to the driving cause. Due to this, she didn’t see the kids in the back seat, both wide awake thanks to the rough drive they were on, exchange a glance that resulted in Lucina nodding at something unspoken. “You’re making a mountain out of something that isn’t even a damn molehill. It’s a speck of dirt on the ground. Insignificant.”

“I think there’s a lot of people who would say otherwise, but what would I know, I’m just your currently drunk co-pilot on this ride through snowy mountains.” Her voice going into a sing-song tone as she finished speaking, Olivia slumped up against her door and deeply sighed. “If there’s one thing you should take from me tonight, it should be that all this is something you really need to look into.”

Leaning forward a bit to try and make sense of where the road was (and only succeeding thanks to the markers on the sides of the narrow road), Sully’s only reply was a low grunt, her not even feeling that words were a necessary response. For the rest of the long ride, taking them double the time it had for them to get to the restaurant, she would shut down Olivia’s questions with similar grunts or very quick reminders that driving in the snowy conditions required a lot more attention than she’d be able to give if she were talking. This resulted in everyone else falling asleep to the sound of the engine and the tires crunching through the fresh powder.

They were all woken up not with an in-vehicle announcement that they’d made it back, although that was certainly part of what woke them up, but rather a loud exclamation that Sully hadn’t expected to need to make. When she’d pulled into the little valley that the camp rested in, she’d figured she would get right back to her spot in front of the cabin with a little snow in it and only one other car there already—so when two car-shape mounds were visible in the beams of the headlights, she was livid. “Are you kidding me?” she yelled, those words being what woke Olivia and the kids up. “They _didn’t_ leave?”

“Who didn’t what now?” Olivia asked, her voice showing that she’d been sleeping pretty heavily despite the circumstances. She looked to Sully, who was pointing at one of the two cars there in front of the cabin, and when she followed the invisible line made by that pointed finger she gasped, her muddled mind at least letting her make sense of what was happening. “Oh…oh dear. I wonder if something happened…”

While she worked to get the kids awake enough to get themselves out of the truck and into the cabin, the snowstorm raging around them, Sully was quick to turn the truck off and jump out of it, heading straight for the door in knee-deep snow. The door was unlocked, predictably, and there was the sound of running water coming from the bathroom inside, someone clearly taking a shower and having no clue that they’d been intruded on. “And what the hell do you think you’re still doing here?” she loudly demanded, looking around and finding no one present. “This is adorable. Real cute, ladies. Real cute.”

As the others filed into the house, Lucina and Inigo complaining about how cold they were while Olivia pushed them in while still a bit dazed from her drinking, there was still no visible sign of anyone being there that shouldn’t have been. “Maybe it’s just an optical illusion,” she suggested, closing the door to keep the snowy wind from blowing more on her shivering children. “Maybe you’re overthinking things, like how you accused me of overthinking your whole romance thing.”

“There’s someone clearly showering,” Sully said, looking towards the still-closed bathroom door, “and while I know someone who has been known to assume that people leave the water running when they leave, I know that we didn’t do that when we were all supposed to leave.” That gave her the idea to go over to the door and try and intimidate the person on the other side out, by rattling the doorknob and yelling at them until they submitted to her tactics. It caught her completely by surprise when she tried turning the knob and found it unlocked like the other door had been, and although she was quick to slam it shut to keep from seeing anyone in the nude, she did see a couple pairs of wide child eyes staring at her in the split-second she could see inside.

“What, did you find it to be empty?” Olivia asked, walking over to the couch to sit down before absolutely screaming at what—or, rather, who—she saw sitting there. “Gods! Lissa! You were supposed to have gone home, my dear! Why are you still here, in this weather, in your condition?”

“I didn’t feel like going back so we didn’t,” she replied, as Olivia still stood before her, shaking her hands in shock at what had just happened. “Sitting in the car didn’t feel right and the weather’s not going to get that bad, so what’s the point in forcing me to go?”

Ending up slumping against the wall next to the chair, her hand over her rapidly-beating heart, Olivia had to take a moment’s rest to be able to bring herself to answer. “The point is that everyone wanted you back in Ylisstol safe and sound, and now you’re going to worry everyone by staying here even longer. Does anyone else matter to you?”

“You’ve been drinking, so you’re being irrational and stupid. They all matter, but it’s not going to be that bad tonight so there’s no problem with us staying just one more night.” Lissa, who had been laying down on the couch to stay out of the line of sight of anyone who came in, which had resulted in her being invisible when everyone first entered, brought herself back to sitting up with some difficulty, her hand gripping the back of the couch for dear life as support. “Trust me, I wouldn’t have suggested not leaving if I was worried.”

“It’s not you that’s going to be worried about this one, you ignorant broad.” Bringing a hand to her face to cover her eyes in shame, Sully had been listening in on that exchange and spoke before Olivia could, because she knew that she wouldn’t hold back on the brutal honesty. “You’re playing with real fire here, thinking that everyone’s going to be fine with your dumb ass staying up here again. Hell, I’m honestly surprised I haven’t gotten a million calls and messages asking if I knew where you were at this point, because you obvious haven’t bothered trying making it home.” At mention of her phone she pulled it from her pocket and chucked it at the wall, it making a hollow sound as it bounced off and to the floor, and she was too busy being steamed about the situation to notice a blue-haired kid being the one to retrieve the device.

“They’re not going to know we didn’t make it back, Maribelle came up with this great plan for how—“

“Ah, yes, because Maribelle has the best plans,” Sully said, cutting off Lissa before she was able to explain the plan in question. “Explain this one to me, how are we all going to manage to sleep in this place tonight? Bunks don’t have a strong enough heater to let you all sleep out there, and I was planning on letting Olivia and her kids sleep in the bed because one, it’s warmer with more people and two, they’re my actual guests. Answer me that, how’re we all going to sleep here?”

“I can answer that one for you, actually.” Maribelle’s voice came as a surprise, as the water in the bathroom was still running, which made it easy to assume that she was letting one or both of her boys shower at that point. “We’ll take the bed, Lissa, myself, and my children, while you all squabble over who gets the floor out there. It’s only fair.”

Snorting at how that suggestion was labeled as “fair”, Sully was going to make some snappish comment about how that was the last possible idea that would be accepted, before realizing that no, letting them sleep in the freezing-cold bedroom with two kids who may not keep the warmth under the covers all night might have been payback enough for the decision. “I’ll take you up on that one,” she finally said, looking over to the two older kids out in the main room with her. “You two want to go get mattresses from the bunks with me, so that you have somewhere to sleep?”

“I guess we can do that,” Inigo answered, before noticing that Lucina was shaking her head at the suggestion. “Er, I mean, I guess I can do that. Lucy’s really not enjoying the cold and would like to, ahem, not go outside in the snow again.” He’d had to clear his throat when his sister punched him, her thinking that he was about to say something out of line.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough of a distraction to make Sully question it, so after she banged on the bathroom door a few times to really rattle Maribelle’s eardrums she and Inigo went outside into the cold and came back minutes later with one mattress carried between them, him barely hanging onto its one end due to how much he was shivering. Rather than force him outside a second time she went alone for the other one, coming back with her front side completely caked in snow. “Damn holes in the ground impossible to miss when there’s no way to see two feet in front of you,” she complained, tossing the hard mattress down on the floor next to the first one she’d brought in. “But this should be enough. There’s extra blankets and pillows in the closet in the bedroom, we’ll make this all work somehow.”

By “somehow” she’d figured that it would be an easy decision to make, but when she ended up having to sleep in an uncomfortable chair all night, something she hadn’t really thought about anyone having to do in years, she knew that she’d be filled with anger about this arrangement come morning light. Little did she know that that wasn’t the only thing that would be greeting her in the morning.


	6. Not Like Last Time

Lon’qu hadn’t really known what was going to happen when he tried calling Lissa to ask her what had possessed her to stay up at the horse camp, and when he’d gotten some sob story that sounded half-like Lissa was being forced to pin blame on herself he shrugged it off, reminding her that there was a _reason_ she needed to get out of there no later than the next day. “You’re going to leave first thing in the morning,” he told her, “and if you argue otherwise I am going to remind you again why that is.”

“I’m not going to argue with you, we totally are leaving tomorrow, but we’re not leaving in the morning. Maybe in the afternoon? I think everyone else is going out for a meal tomorrow so it’ll work out.” Lissa sounded happy as she spoke, a pleasant sound to Lon’qu as he’d been stressing out just a bit about her whereabouts. “We’ll make it out to Ylisstol safe and sound and you’ll meet me there in a couple days, and hopefully everything’s going to go exactly like we’ve been thinking it will.”

“It will go according to plan.” Stiffening up as he sat on the end of his bed, his spot in the room being the small alcove room that came off the side of the main room, Lon’qu peeked out to where his commanders’ beds both sat empty before continuing to speak to his wife. “I understand that children tend to not follow the best-laid plans, but I refuse to believe that anything but what we’ve planned for will happen here.”

On her side of the phone, Lissa let out a long sigh. “I wish that was the case, but Olivia and Maribelle keep saying otherwise. Well, kind of. Maribelle’s super down with everything falling in line just like we planned for it, but Olivia thinks that we’re going to be surprised. She’s like, ‘oh, you can’t rely on what doctors plan, it doesn’t work that way,’ and I’m really hoping she’s just trying to scare me into leaving. Which we’re doing anyway, tomorrow. I promise we are, Lon’qu. I do.”

“As long as you make it to Maribelle’s home safe and sound tomorrow night, I will believe you.” He heard the door creaking open in the other part of the room, and he sighed. “I must go now, my love. We shall speak again tomorrow, before you go.”

“I don’t know about that, but we will talk tomorrow! Love you!” Her hanging up was a tad eager, only slightly reminiscent of his own behavior, but at the end of the day Lon’qu was just happy he’d been able to talk to his Lissa a bit before getting wrapped up in more of a mess there at the conference. The person coming into the room was his personal commander, the gruff man giving him a chuckle as he walked past the small entryway between the two rooms while on his way to his belongings beside his bed.

As soon as he was out of view, Lon’qu stood up, stretching as he did. He’d been talking to Lissa for…a lot longer than he’d realized he had been, if chief Basilio was up in the room. “Do you have a reason for being up here, sir?” he asked mid-stretch, repeating his question when he wasn’t answered after a few seconds. Basilio didn’t answer after the repetition, leaving him to clear his throat and say, “Sir, there has been some urgent change in plans and now I must—“

“You’re not going anywhere, boy.” With a laugh, Basilio pulled his head out of his bag and looked towards where Lon’qu was still stretching. “We’ve talked about this. You’re not going anywhere until the conference is over, unless that wife of yours is actively pushing that kid out. And since mister hotshot Chrom’s not worried sick about his sister’s health, I think I can safely guess that she’s still playing the part of your kid’s incubator.”

“She is, I was merely testing you for what your response would be.” Lon’qu sat back down on his bed under Basilio’s watchful eye, trying to play off his trick the best he could by pocketing his phone. “I haven’t heard much from her while we have been here, as you know, and I’m sure she would have told me if something were to go amiss before the conference is over. There is no reason for me to even consider leaving early.”

The laugh Basilio had been giving went from jolly to rough in a matter of seconds as he approached the entryway to the attached room, standing at full height with his bald head nearly brushing the top of the arched doorway. “Mind running that one by me again, Lon’qu? Because I don’t mean to sound like I’ve been doing some snooping, but if you thought you could hide getting into fights from your commander, well…” He ran two fingers in front of his throat, making Lon’qu shift uncomfortably. “You know that fighting fellow officers isn’t allowed in these kinds of places. You’re making our proud delegation from Regna Ferox look like a right piece of garbage.”

“Fighting officers?” Lon’qu scoffed. “Sir, I have done nothing of the sort. If anything, that lowlife man from Ylisse has been picking fights with me that I have done my best to ignore. You would know this if you’ve watched our interactions.”

“Did I ask you for a backtalked excuse?” Basilio laughed once more, going back to his originally jolly sound. “Just try to keep your anger and displeasure with the guy in check. I’ve talked to Chrom about him extensively, he says the guy just can’t handle when he doesn’t get things his way. Sad excuse of an officer, if you’d ask me. Bad traits.”

Without so much as blinking, Lon’qu replied, “Says the man who tells people to kiss his ‘big brown ass’ every time he doesn’t get his way.”

“Watch the tone there, boy. I could easily let you go from your position if you keep that kind of talk up. Only person allowed to disrespect me is me.” Basilio turned and went back to looking for something in his bag, leaving Lon’qu there to sit and shake his head at what had just happened. He knew that, in the end, all of this was just joking banter between them, as they had known each other for a long time and had always been at the other’s side whenever they needed someone to be there. It was, after all, at one of Basilio’s get-togethers that he had first been introduced to Chrom, being personally introduced to the head of the Ylissean police force by the man half-in charge of the Feroxi force.

He closed his eyes and thought about that night for a moment, the memory of him and Olivia both being summoned by Basilio to meet the visiting man, not knowing then just how attached to him both of their lives would become. Thinking about Olivia and how she fell instantly in love with Chrom made him remember how much he hated when she left their town to go live in Ylisstol with her soulmate, but the thought quickly faded into how him visiting her for the holidays had introduced him to the love of his life. His hand was absentmindedly patting his phone as he thought about Lissa and how important she was to him, going from being someone who he couldn’t stand to the only woman (aside from Olivia) that he could tolerate being with. And, uh, _being_ with.

“So this is where you two ended up, huh? Not surprising, the Plegian folks downstairs are starting allegiance chants and are overpowering everyone else something fierce.” The speaker had just come in through the door, her voice snapping Lon’qu from his thoughts of tender moments with his wife. “If we want to stand a chance against them, we’re going to have to show some real Feroxi spirit.”

“Now’s not the time for that hogwash, Flavia,” Basilio replied to the woman, walking away from his bag once more to meet her right in front of the entryway that Lon’qu was now looking through to watch them. “We’ve got bigger fish to fry. Bigger issues to take care of. Certain people’s subordinates being complete asses.”

“Now, now, no need to be vague with who you’re talking about.” Flavia looked to Lon’qu, noticing that he was looking right back at her slightly offended, as if he thought she was referring to him. “Not you, Lon’qu, that other guy. Chrom’s so-called ‘replacement’ for his charming head investigator. The one that seems to be itching for a fight with you.”

“Talking about him with me present isn’t going to do anyone any favors whatsoever,” Lon’qu coldly said, standing up and coming into the doorway, joining the two dark-skinned superiors in their side of the room. They both looked to him with surprise, Flavia slightly amused and Basilio trying not to laugh again, but the surprise turned to shock when he walked right past them and headed for the door to the hallway. “I’m going to go out for a walk to clear my head, do not follow me.”

“Not the way to talk to your commanders, but I’ll respect it. You go do battle with those thoughts, we’ll be here waiting for you when you come back.” Flavia nodded at her own words, and when Basilio didn’t chime in with his own piece (or even to gripe about how she’d used the plural commander _s_ , taking position as a leader where she wasn’t technically), she turned and punched him lightly on the arm. “Aren’t you going to say something to back me up? Not normally like you to stay silent.”

Basilio shrugged, causing Flavia to punch him again. “Hey now, I already said my bit to him. Threatened him with losing his job, told him he’s a shame to the Feroxi officers for picking fights, you know how it is.” He looked past her to Lon’qu as he was opening the door and stepping outside without a single care as to what they were doing behind him. “Besides, sometimes you’ve got to take a hands-off approach to these kinds of things. Lon’qu is a smart man, he’ll fix his problems without me sticking my nose in them.”

“Or so you can hope, anyway,” Flavia laughed, punching at him a third time but having him catch her hand and push it away. “So, do we go down and show those Plegian morons some Feroxi spirit, just the two of us? No one’s going to know how to handle us if we go, and we’ll win their silly competition, we’ll really scare them into submission.”

Whatever they decided, Lon’qu wasn’t going to stick around long enough to see it happen. He was already heading towards the stairs, wanting to get as far away from everyone and everything as he possibly could, if only for a little bit. Things were starting to get to him, between what was happening with the Ylissean officers and what was happening with his wife’s whereabouts, and he needed some time, even if just a few minutes, to sit and think in absolute silence.

The stairs, when taken all the way to the top of the hotel, led out to a rooftop landing that seemed to have been used as a smoking spot on a few occasions, judging by the cigarette butts scattered all over the ground. The few chairs that were up there had burn marks covering them, their paint faded from the hot, relentless Plegian sun that must have been beating down on them every day for years, but Lon’qu wasn’t up there to take a seat and enjoy the sights of the desert. “What an odd trip this has already shaped up to be,” he said to himself, looking out into the distance, the sparse lights of the desert visible in the dark air. “I can only hope that the oddities end today and from here on out it’s completely normal.”

He stayed up there for a while, seeing planes taking off and landing at the airport, cars driving to and from the hotel every so often. When he went back down, his hotel room was empty and dark, letting him know that his roommates had gone to the lobby and the events with everyone else without regard to if he would want to go or not. That was fine by him, as it meant he could sleep off the rest of the day and wake up the next morning freshly energized and ready to face what else the world had to throw at him.

That, of course, would have worked if “morning” didn’t end up meaning “before sunrise”, and if he didn’t feel like he was dragging from the moment he sat up in bed. As quietly as he could, to keep his roommates asleep and not bothering him for social interaction he had no interest in, he threw on some clean clothes and left the room, the hallway eerily silent and do not disturb tags hanging from every handle he could see. Being awake at this lonely hour was the kind of thing that Lon’qu wasn’t always a big fan of, but when it happened he tended to take it completely in stride, because it meant that, at least for a little while, he would be alone with his thoughts.

The rooftop landing was his destination once more, just as dark as it had been the previous night, and as he sat up on one of the benches and started watching the sky on the horizon lighten up as dawn quickly approached, he found himself at peace with everything that had been going on. Sure, he was stuck in Plegia for a couple more days, but he didn’t need to worry about his wife’s whereabouts for all that much longer as long as she kept to her word, and once he didn’t need to worry about her he could focus on other, more important things, things like impressing the elite officers in positions he could easily take on if he was given the chance, or things like being seen as a respectable officer in regards to people on the same level as him. It was hard to find that kind of respect when his mind was occupied on other things to the point of them being a huge distraction to his performance, after all.

“Of all the places to find someone, I never expected that up here would be one of them.” Lon’qu turned when he heard the woman’s voice, a scowl on his face until he recognized her as being someone he’d interacted with before at this conference, the long pink hair that looked more muted in the dark his lone visual reminder. “You must have some good reason for coming up here so early today. Care to share it?”

“No thank you,” he coldly replied, looking back out to the horizon. “Apologies for intruding on your space, but I needed somewhere to sit and think.”

The woman smiled at him, her face showing no real sign of being happy despite the gesture. “That would be why I come up here as well. I have to spend my time during the conference stuck in the bedroom, as my attendance came only in the role of ‘assistant’ to an officer. It is nice to get a chance to step outside and enjoy other things.” She sat down across from Lon’qu, still looking at him with her deadened smile. “You are one of the Feroxi men, if I am not mistaken. Is the summer heat here too much for you to bear?”

“I would not say so, but the heat has nothing to do with why I’m up here now and not at any other time.” He tried not to focus on the fact that he wasn’t alone any longer, trying to move past her presence by just ignoring her, but it felt too much like her eyes were boring holes into him and so he turned to face her, seeing that all-too-forced smile still upon her lips. “Can you please leave me be? I was clearly here first.”

“That is what Virion says whenever I intrude on his personal time, and my response is to always laugh and remain present.” Her eyes crinkling shut, she finally turned away so that Lon’qu felt less like he was being spied on, allowing for him to go back to his silent thinking, but the moment was short-lived as she quickly went right back to staring him down without his consent.

He was quicker to catch on the second time, his head whipping around to look at her with exasperation in his eyes. “Please, ma’am, I understand that you are a bit of an overprotective assistant to your officer, but you must leave me alone. Right now.” His hand reached for his pocket, where if he were fully dressed in proper uniform any sort of self-defense weapon would have been accessible, but all he found was his phone. “I…cannot physically intimidate you into doing so, but it would mean a lot if you would just give me the space I need to work through what’s bothering me.”

“My apologies, I am so used to being the _one_ to help with my partner’s problems that I seem to have forgotten that not everyone is interested in using me as their listening ear.” The woman stood up, bowing her head so that her hair cascaded down in front of her. It was all a gesture that Lon’qu didn’t appreciate, even though she seemed to want him to. When she looked back up, the smile was gone and she looked just as dead inside as she had when she was smiling, even though she had gone completely straight-faced. “You have been to my room already once during this conference, if you decide you do want to rely on a stranger for some assistance, you know where to find me.”

“Yes, well, I don’t foresee me needing to speak with you again after this, miss…ahem.” Lon’qu looked to the woman as she was heading back for the door, rotating one of his hands in front of him as he tried to pull her name from thin air. “I don’t believe that I actually caught your name, even during that meeting in your room.”

“My name,” she said, “is Cherche, and I am not surprised in the slightest that you do not remember that. In the frenzy of getting everyone in that meeting to know one another I was cast aside, as all good assistants are, and Virion did his best to act like our accomplishments were merely his.” She was to the door now, opening it back up to head inside before anyone noticed she was gone, but Lon’qu sighed and told her to close it and return to her seat, realizing now what he’d done. “Pardon? You wanted me to leave you alone for your thoughts and I was merely obliging. Have I done something wrong?”

“You have not,” he told her, “but I feel that I have in pushing you from your rightful spot. As long as you promise to keep your mouth shut while I’m up here, I suppose we can share the lookout for the time being.” It wasn’t every day that Lon’qu was going to admit he was wrong, especially not to a woman, but there with Cherche he honestly felt like he needed to correct his behavior. She smirked at him, actual feeling coming through her expression this time, before taking her seat across from his once more, legs crossed in front of her and her hands resting on her knee.

She stared at him in silence, following through with his one demand, and together they were up on the landing as the sun rose over the desert town, illuminating what was nothing more than a barren landscape foreign to them both. Without keeping track of what time it was, Lon’qu could have spent hours up there, or at least until the sun’s heat became too much for anyone to handle, but a third person coming up to the landing was enough to put a stop to that. When the door flew open, a very distinct voice called out, “So this is where you’ve gotten off to today, hm, Cherche?” and it was then that Lon’qu knew he needed to go. While she began explaining to Virion why she was up on the roof, he snuck past the man in the doorway, shaking his head at the odd master-servant relationship the two seemed to have, and headed back downstairs to check if anyone was awake.

The room he was staying in was completely empty when he got down to it, odd with it being such an early hour but understandable given the fact that they were at a conference and most likely had something to be doing right then. And if sitting down in the lobby, talking with some of the commanders of other police forces was that something, they were clearly excelling at it. When he got down to the lobby and saw them surrounded by other high-ranking men and women, he gave a curt nod at Basilio, who gave a small wave in return, the simple exchange of gestures all they needed to let each other know that nothing was happening aside from the obvious. He figured he could have tried squeezing in with them to get chummy with other regions’ police leaders, but the sight of a few people with, like him, no right to be in the mix was a perfect distraction from the big group.

“I don’t mean to intrude on your coffee date,” he said upon approaching the pair sitting at the high-top table against the wall, two heads turning to face him, “but I have nowhere else to be right this moment and I assumed that speaking with some, ahem, friendly allies would be a good idea.”

“Friendly allies, one-time attempted defectors to your homeland, take your pick on how you want to refer to us.” With a shrug, Tharja turned back to her drink, which Lon’qu was now able to see was some sort of tea rather than any kind of coffee. “We’re happy to include you, if you’d like. I’m sure Henry would be over the moon to hear you talk about your kid.”

Lon’qu was taken aback at Tharja’s matter-of-fact way of bringing that up, but before he could even question where she’d heard that from, he had hands on both shoulders shaking him back and forth. “Listen, I know the kid’s not born yet so there’s not much you _can_ say, but you’ve got to hook me up on any information you can! If I wasn’t part of this whole silly police thing, I’d be trying to raise all the babies in the world! Blow everyone away with how many babies I could make!” Henry laughed, still shaking an unamused Lon’qu. “Just tell me everything you can, please! I’ll do anything for the information!”

“Anything for it, hm?” Lon’qu repeated, forcefully grabbing one of Henry’s arms and pulling it away from him. When the white-haired man nodded, he took in a deep breath and said, “Fair enough. As long as this doesn’t become your excuse to come to Ferox at the first chance you get, I’ll tell you what I can.”

With a smirk as she sipped her tea, Tharja watched Lon’qu pull a chair up beside her and Henry, her companion almost shaking in excitement at the fact that he’d be getting to talk about one of his favorite things. Of course, she knew how this conversation was going to go, something that poor, unsuspecting Lon’qu didn’t, and she wasn’t going to be surprised if the whole thing went up in flames long before anything of note was said. She hadn’t even been able to set her cup back down before the red flags started popping up, the first sign of trouble being Henry asking (without Lon’qu saying a single word about his child) if he’d already started planning for things in case of an accident or a spontaneous death.

She was cackling as she heard Lon’qu gasp, bringing a hand to his mouth to hold in any kind of negative comment he was about to make. “I’m just saying, there’s a certain level of risk of infant mortality you have to keep in mind,” Henry explained, not caring that his fixation on the morbid death thing was unwelcomed in the conversation. “I’ve done all sorts of research on it. Happens in birds all the time—sometimes their eggs don’t hatch, and sometimes the babies fall from the nest without a parent there to save them! Wouldn’t that be terrible, your kid dying because they fell from a couch or something?”

“Are you here to thoroughly worry me, or are you here to listen to what information I do have on my son?” Lon’qu asked, moving his hand from his mouth to reach out towards Henry, miming wringing his neck at the comments. “I already have enough on my mind regarding the welfare of the baby, I don’t need your input making things worse.”

“Sorry, sorry, I just…it’s not every day someone with a real, almost-living baby wants to talk to me!” Henry giggled, almost like he was some young schoolchild learning about the process of baby-making for the first time, not listening to a to-be-father try to talk about his unborn child. “I’ll stop with the death and depressing stuff, promise!”

As Lon’qu accepted that at face value and started talking, Tharja’s smirk grew and she took another sip of her drink, actually getting to set her cup down after it. “I don’t know how well buying into Henry’s lies is going to work for you there, pal,” she said under her breath. “I’ve known the guy for a long time and he’s never actually stopped talking about death once he’s gotten started.” Even though her voice was low, she did catch Henry side-eyeing her, him looking to her for approval of his current behavior. She didn’t give him what he wanted, choosing to instead pick her drink back up and finish the cup off, only to then get up and head to get herself a second cup of tea. By the time she came back, not even three minutes later, Henry was sitting there laughing uncontrollably and Lon’qu was gone.

“Might I ask what you managed to do to the guy?” An eyebrow raised at Henry as she took her seat once more, Tharja was trying her hardest to not give in to joining the laughter. “I could guess it has something to do with death, or…”

“Turns out guys don’t like when you ask them how sleeping with their wife works,” Henry replied through his laughter, facing Tharja with his squinted-shut eyes and his reddened face. “He didn’t even try answering me, he just left like he didn’t want to deal with it! Come on, a guy’s got a curiosity and no one’s going to feed it! How am I going to get my answers? Finding out for myself?”

He cracked an eye open to look at Tharja, who had let her lips sink into a straight line. She shook her head, using the hand not holding her tea to scratch along her throat, hoping that it would give Henry the idea that his suggestion was never going to fly. Instead, all it did was get him to resume laughing, leaving her to be witness to his behavior in case he fell from his seat or something.

Meanwhile, Lon’qu had fled from the lobby entirely, trying to find somewhere on that ground floor that wasn’t swarming with officers who could see him in his currently-panicked state. It wasn’t even the strangeness of the question he’d been asked that had gotten to him, it was the realization that he’d gotten close enough to a woman that being asked questions like that was reasonable. He didn’t want people to start asking him about the physical affection aspect of being married, that wasn’t something he’d ever wanted in life, and there wasn’t any way to go about asking people to refrain from that topic, was there?

He was ducking into every open doorway he could find, looking for the first place that was empty to hide for just a moment. Going back up to the room, it was an option but it wasn’t one that he wanted to take, given that if he was back up there he wouldn’t be able to hear a mass exodus of officers heading to whatever the day’s destination was. He needed somewhere there on the main floor, and he was quickly realizing that he wasn’t going to find it; every door he pushed open had at least five people on the other side, only adding to the crushing anxiety of what was happening. What if they were all judging him as he looked for somewhere to hide, despite not knowing that was what he was doing?

The last door on the floor led to a weight room, which was predictably occupied, but the one person inside seemed to be too focused on whatever their phone was playing and the speed of the treadmill they were running on to notice Lon’qu come inside and sit down on one of the weight benches, laying down on the cushioned bench like he was going to actually work out. “I…I have to get over this phobia at some point,” he told himself, running both hands down his face. “I am a married man, to a lovely woman who has done no wrong to me. I cannot act like this when sleeping with her is brought up. It’s not appropriate or proper, and if I’m going to keep this up, what business do I have being married to her?”

He lay there for a few minutes, asking himself that last question over and over again until he could come up with a decent answer to it, but even then, the answer he had wasn’t anything more than a reassurance that he was married to her for love, not for anything like sleeping together. If he didn’t want to accept the fact that he could (and definitely had) sleep with her, he shouldn’t have to do it, and he certainly didn’t need to explain how he could do it to anyone else, aside from the people directly involved. Coming to that conclusion did wonders on calming him down, bringing his racing heartbeat back to a steady pace and stopping his hands and arms from shaking like he was scared of something. He definitely was not scared of anything, especially not the idea of explaining how he got through sleeping with his wife!

“I should get back to where everyone else is,” he said to himself as he sat up, looking around the weight room at the machines there for use. “It’s a wonder that there is only one other person here right now, but perhaps there is a reason for that. Perhaps…no, that wouldn’t be it, there wouldn’t have been so many people in the other rooms if that were the case.” He was trying to psyche himself back up to rejoin the vast majority of the officers, and while he was doing that he didn’t notice the person on the treadmill stop their running and remove one of their headphones to listen in on what he was saying. “I’m going to go back and act like nothing’s happened. Nothing at all.”

“Aye, you must be mighty glad I only caught the tailwind of what you were saying there to yourself,” the woman on the treadmill said with one earbud dangling from her head, snapping Lon’qu from his focused state to look around wildly for where she was. He jumped to his feet at the same time she came down from her perch, smiling at him when they were standing face-to-face. “Although, judging by how it’s you that’s been talking, I can only imagine it’s something to do with that lovely lass you’ve got waiting for you back home.”

“I—yes, that would be correct, Say’ri.” Lon’qu scuffed the floor with one of his feet, ashamed that he hadn’t noticed _who_ the one person in the room was. If he had known it was one of the officers from Chon’sin, he would have tried finding somewhere else. “Listen, I didn’t mean to interrupt your alone time, so I’ll just…go, if you don’t mind.” He was backing away towards the door before he’d even finished speaking, Say’ri shaking her head at him as she watched him retreat.

“You should be aware that I don’t judge a single bit of your actions,” she called after him, her eyes focusing on him until he was through the door, after which her attention went back to her phone, music of some kind still playing on it. “But gods help you if anyone who does overheard a word of what you were saying. The walls here in Plegia, they’ve got ears bigger than you’d think…” As she put her earbud back in and resumed running on her treadmill, the faintest of reflections could be seen in the outer windows of the room, showing that it might not have just been two people present after all.

Lon’qu hastily made his way back to the lobby area, looking to see if Basilio was done with his conversation so that he could just talk to him and keep his mind off of everything else. But when he saw that his commander was still in the heat of conversation, he had to resort to looking around for someone else to be with. Henry and Tharja were still sitting at their high-top table, but there were a million things he would rather do than have to interact with them—and he was fairly certain he would end up having to do one of those things.

While he had been looking around, Frederick had seen him and was waving him over, which was more than okay. He could trust that man, but the man he was standing with? That was where the problem was. Was being in a close vicinity of someone who had tried to attack him multiple times since they’d gotten to the conference really a good idea? Before he had a chance to think about that, a strong arm wrapped itself around him and he felt himself being pulled down into someone, a fist mussing his hair. “Now, now, why’re you standing around gawking at everyone? Trying to think of something to do?” Basilio asked, voice booming as always. “Come on, you’ve got to come to this next seminar with me. My treat.”

“Y-yes sir,” he replied, stealing a glance back to where he’d been being waved at, only to see that Chrom was talking to his two underlings in a rather enthusiastic manner. “Might I ask what this is about?”

“Not the time for questions right now.” Letting go of him to allow for him to stand back up straight, Basilio waited for Lon’qu to start trying to fix his hair before he began pushing him in the direction that a lot of the other officers were heading. “Maybe when this is all started you’ll get the answer you’re looking for. Come on now, already sent the woman ahead of us to pick some seats.”

“I don’t think Flavia would appreciate knowing you’re referring to her as such, but I understand.”  Lon’qu tried to look and see what those Ylissean officers were doing, but they’d already disappeared, leaving him to sigh and give in to being pushed around like he was. There wasn’t much else he could do at that point, he conceded, and he needed to get a grip back on reality and start acting like the good police officer he was.

The auditorium where the day’s seminar was being held was mostly filled by the time they got there, Basilio looking around with his one good eye to check for where Flavia had gotten seats for them. Lon’qu wasn’t trying to find her, he was honestly more interested in seeing everyone else located in one place, but when he saw the other commander with her arm thrown proudly into the air, blocking the people sitting next to her from view from the current vantage point. When they got over to her, pushing past large delegations from the world over as they fought over where to sit, the reason she’d been blocking the seat-neighbors made perfect sense: who else would it have been but the Ylisseans?

“Hope you don’t mind our company too much,” Flavia said with a laugh, motioning to the empty seats on either side of her. “Figured this would work out better than sitting next to some foreign lot we don’t even share a border with. The Valmese group tried claiming these seats as theirs, but they know you don’t mess with the Feroxis.” She lowered her arm, bending it to show off her muscles. “Threatened to push their asses out of these chairs if they didn’t move themselves.”

“That’s one way to get good seats, I suppose.” Basilio waited for Lon’qu to sit before he took his own chair, each of them picking one side of Flavia to be on. Lon’qu made sure that his side was the one that had him furthest from the Ylisseans, just in case someone tried to start something. “Let’s just hope that they don’t go running to someone to get us in trouble for that, y’hear?”

Flavia snorted. “Running to someone? I get that, historically, the Valm leaders haven’t been the greatest of people, but running to _someone_? They’d handle the problems themselves. Besides, this isn’t a military function, it’s a police one. Worst we’ll get is a few stink eyes.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure on that,” Chrom inputted, leaning forward to be able to see the two Feroxi leaders (and, based on how he kept making eye contact with Lon’qu, him as well). “From what everyone’s been saying, it seems that some of those guys from Valm are rather buddy-buddy with some of the Plegian leaders.” He shuddered, before motioning towards the stage of the room, where the big names in all of Plegia were gathered to start the seminar. “Like that despicable piece of garbage up there. Man leads to my sister’s death and still holds a post in his country. If the Valm chiefs are talking to him, we might be—“

“Hold your tongue on that, as hard as it might be for you. We’re not here to talk badly about them, we’re here to be shown their generosity as they hold this conference for us.” Flavia’s words were enough to get Chrom to sigh and sit back properly. “I get that you’d love to make them your scapegoat, but I doubt they’re going to do a thing to us. Them or the Valmese. All I did was stand my ground, there’s nothing for us to be afraid of.”

“—I’ll believe in you on this one,” Chrom said, giving up on his argument solely because of how confident Flavia was in her statement. “But if we’ve caused a security nightmare for either of our countries because of some seats, that blame’s on you.”

If the three of them continued their conversation, Lon’qu wasn’t paying attention to it. He heard Basilio start to say something in response to the idea of a security nightmare (and it probably had the word “hogwash” or the phrase “kiss my black ass” in it), but he wasn’t going to listen in on them when it wasn’t his place. They were in this room for a reason, he needed to be respectful of it, and as the people on the stage began addressing everyone who was gathered there, he wanted to try his hardest to focus on them. The Plegian officers were, as a collective whole, hard to take in, especially when they started showboating and bragging that their force was better than any other in the world.

The grumbles and groans that boast started were nothing compared to things their later comments would create, and as the hours dragged on, the seminar going nowhere but building up the pride of Plegia’s police force, people in the crowd started shifting in their seats, eager to get out. Walking out with no reason but to escape the madness wasn’t going to do anyone any favors, though, and so the lucky few who were called out for whatever reason at random were lucky indeed. Lon’qu, keeping check on the time to see that morning had faded into afternoon, began wondering if he’d get to be one of those people, receiving a message from a loved one that he could use as an excuse to leave.

He never got that chance, but someone a few seats down from him did, his phone ringing just loudly enough that everyone in their general area heard it. “I’ll…be taking this call,” Frederick said as he stood up, flashing the screen of his phone at Chrom and Lon’qu both as he passed them. The sigh of relief that had came from Chrom when he had seen it had given Lon’qu hope as to what it was, and so when he saw that the call was from Maribelle, he knew that the time those ladies were leaving the camp for good was finally upon them.

For the rest of the seminar, and for the rest of the evening, all he could think about was how he didn’t need to worry about where Lissa was any longer, because she was going to be in Ylisstol as they’d discussed and everything was going to be perfectly fine. The one issue? Never once did he get a call from her telling him that they’d made it down, and as far as he knew, no one else did either.

* * *

The first sign that something had gone completely wrong overnight was that Sully woke up to the sound of chattering teeth and heavy breathing, in a dimly-lit room that looked like it had blankets covering the windows to filter out the natural light. She yawned and stretched, her neck cracking and popping as she brought herself to her feet to see what was going on. It wasn’t exactly the greatest night’s sleep that she’d had, but it was a lot better than she’d expected it would be, even though she was bitter that she’d had to sleep in the chair she mentally connected to watching Vaike sleep there all those nights…

“Ugh, am I really thinking about _him_?” she asked herself as she carefully stepped around the mattresses on the floor, the two kids sleeping on them huddled together for warmth because of how bitterly cold it had gotten in the cabin. The cold actually wasn’t something that Sully’s mind was registering, her having had to deal with that exact situation several times before, but it was still noticeable enough in other ways that she was working towards getting it fixed before anyone else woke up and noticed it. After getting her jacket and shoes on, cursing at herself for not bringing more than one set of super-warm clothes, she opened the front door with all intentions of going and restarting the generator.

She was greeted with a foot of snow cascading into the house at her feet, freezing her toes almost instantly. “That’s a new one,” she commented, kicking at the snow and further sending a chill through her feet. “Don’t remember it doing that like that the last time I got snowed in up here.”

“Wh-what was that?” The voice was unexpected, as Sully had been pretty certain that she was the only one awake when she’d come over to the door, so when she turned and saw Maribelle standing right behind her, shivering like she was completely underdressed for the elements (which she was), she was a bit surprised. But it was quickly made worth it when she saw the blonde’s reaction to the massive amount of snow outside the cabin’s front door, her screaming and reaching to tug at a couple of her long ringlets. “Oh, oh gods! What’s this, why’s it all snowy like this? You never warned us it would do that!”

“Why the hell else do you think you needed to get out of here yesterday?” Sully asked, a hint of teasing in her voice. “Because the weather was going to be perfectly clear come today? No, because there was a snowstorm hitting in the Feroxi mountains in the middle of summer. I’m not as stupid as you clearly thought I was when I told you to leave.”

“I didn’t think you were stupid, I j-just thought you were overreacting! Damn it, I thought we’d be able to make it back to Ylisstol with no problems today!” Clutching her arms to try and warm herself up, Maribelle turned and walked towards the countertop in the small kitchen, jumping up onto it and yelping at how cold it was against her backside. “You’re going to get us home today, correct?”

Looking back to the outdoors and the snow she was going to have to travel through to turn the generator back on, Sully shook her head and took the first step outside. “No way, that’s not any problem of mine. You’re the one who didn’t leave when you were told to, you’re the one who’s got to fix the problem.”

“It w-wasn’t my idea to stay, I was more than happy to drive home last night. It was Lissa and her stupid insistence that she not ride in the car, she’s the reason we’re still here.” Maribelle was swinging her legs to generate heat, her heels knocking against the cabinet beneath her as she did. That sound was grating enough to Sully’s ears to hear it as she was still in the doorway that she actually closed the door when she was outside so that she wouldn’t have to keep hearing it. The world outside was oddly still and calm, the sky above a bright blue that was incredibly deceptive to the snow-covered ground, and if it weren’t for the fact that she hadn’t heard the distinct rumbling of an avalanche somewhere outside of the valley, Sully would have assumed that this was an almost-identical situation to that last time she’d been stuck up there.

Minus the part about the company she was having to endure the being trapped with, at any rate. “I can’t believe that they disregarded the warnings and stayed after all,” she grumbled, to her thighs in snow as she trudged to the generator behind the cabin, flipping its power switch once she got to it. “They’re a pair of idiots, thinking that being stuck up here is ever a good idea. At least last time it happened, it happened because I was trying to rescue some damn horses. That was honorable, that was nice, that was…” She pursed her lips together and exhaled a deep breath, her breath a thick fog in front of her. “That was better than this ever could be.”

By the time she was back to the door, her pants were completely soaked and her shoes were even worse, everything from her waist down numb from being in the snow. As she opened her way into the cabin she could still hear the knocking of Maribelle’s heels on the cabinet, even more rapid than it had been when she’d left, and she had fully intended on calling her out for what she was doing. But Maribelle seemed to be in tears as she was talking to someone on her phone, regrettably telling them what she’d done, or neglected to do, and facing the consequences of her actions right there in the cabin. That put a smug smile on Sully’s lips, as it was always nice to see someone get the payment they were owed for some bad choices, even though this wasn’t anything close to a good situation.

“Do you know why it was so cold in here?” she heard Olivia ask with a groan, finding her still laying on the couch where she’d slept overnight with a hand resting on her forehead. “I thought maybe I had gotten the chills from being hungover, but I’m realizing now that I’m perfectly fine, just a bit cold.”

“You’re crazy, woman,” Sully told her, stripping away her wet shoes, socks, and pants before walking towards the bedroom with the wet articles in hand. “But to answer your question, sometimes the generator goes out and someone’s got to go out there and restart it. Didn’t think it’d have done that since it just kicked on yesterday, but that’s just how it goes. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get some dry clothes.”

It hadn’t clicked in her mind that she should have given some kind of warning to whoever was in the bedroom before she entered it, because she had temporarily forgotten that it wasn’t going to be empty when she went inside. Thankfully, it seemed that everyone in the bed was still fast asleep, allowing her to sigh in relief that she wasn’t having to explain to anyone why she was without pants, and she was quick to change into what she needed before leaving the room without so much as a peep from anyone in the bed. “You’re not going to like what I have to say to you,” Maribelle loudly said once the bedroom door was closed once more, words pointed at Sully and not someone on the phone. “I need you to take us to Ylisstol, today, no matter what.”

“I always knew you were missing a few screws,” she said in reply, not even looking in Maribelle’s direction. “On snowy roads, it’ll be a good eight hours one way, and I’m not leaving half the people here up here while I take the other half where they ‘need’ to go, just to have to turn around and come back by myself. You’re crazy for suggesting it, even crazier for demanding it like you just did.”

“No, you don’t understand. I _need_ this.” Maribelle was biting on her lip, her eyes rapidly glancing from side to side as she thought about what she was saying long and hard, before she hopped down from the countertop. “Staying up here was a mistake, and it wasn’t my idea but I shouldn’t have allowed for it to happen. I shouldn’t have. Now I’m the one to blame for everything when I only listened to what my best friend had wanted from me.”

“Congrats, you decided to choose to listen to an irrational pregnant woman over listening to literally everyone else, you’ve made your bed and now you have to lay in it.” Sully was holding no punches with her words, even though Maribelle was clearly showing regret for what she’d done in her entire expression. “I’ll make sure to keep an ear out for when the roads’ll be clear enough for your junk car to make the drive back, but it might be a few days. A week, maybe? Better hope there’s no avalanches.”

“You cheeky woman, thinking this is all a joke? I’m not asking to get home to avoid incurring the wrath of my husband or any other man right now, I’m asking because someone here really should be home today, at the latest, and now she’s not going to get there.” Maribelle’s breath caught in her throat when she heard the floor of the cabin creak and didn’t see anyone moving, a noise followed by the bedroom door opening and an incredibly disoriented Lissa walking out while everyone watched her. Maribelle was rushing to her side, grabbing her up in an unexplained hug and beginning to sob, before she could even begin to figure out what was happening.

“Uh, hi there, Maribelle. Good morning,” she said before yawning, patting her friend on the back a couple of times for good measure. “What’s got you so affectionate already today? I’m feeling like we could get going any time now, if you…Maribelle? Why are you crying? Something bad didn’t happen, did it?”

The side door out to the clearing where the cars were parked was closer to their current position than the front door was, so Maribelle slowly moved herself and her friend to that door, opening it once they were close enough. “Does this fit your definition of ‘bad’, Lissa? Because I would certainly hope it does!”

“Look at all that snow…” Lissa said, craning her neck to look over Maribelle’s crying body that had gone right back to hugging her after opening the door. “It’s almost like it’s wintertime out there, but it’s not. It’s July. It’s—oh fuck.” Her curse was a surprise to everyone who heard it, and although she should have been apologetic for using such a word in the potential presence of children, she was anything but. “I’m supposed to be in town today, I’m supposed to be going in tomorrow morning if my O’wain isn’t born by then and I’m here. I’m hours from Ylisstol and it’s my fault.”

She glanced towards Sully, hoping that the redhead would have some magic suggestion on what to do to fix things, but just like she had with Maribelle’s asking for a ride into town, she shot the idea down. “You’re the one who picked staying up here in a snowstorm over going home to get where you need to go tomorrow,” she said, not flinching at the way Lissa let her lower lip jut out to try and garner sympathy. “You made this decision, not me.”

“I didn’t think it was actually going to snow like this,” Lissa whined, looking outside at the winter-like wonderland they were trapped in. “I thought it was just going to be a little bit of snow, if any at all! It doesn’t snow in summer where we live, and we don’t live that far from here if you really think about it.”

“You also don’t live up in the high mountains of the country. Not my problem, we’ll ride the melting process out and you ladies can get on down to Ylisstol within a week. Any disagreements, you’ll be searching for your own rides down.” There was a tone to Sully’s voice that showed she meant business as she spoke, one that made Lissa and Maribelle exchange a glance between them that was relaying to each other that they knew just how much of a mess they were in. “And no, that doesn’t mean borrowing the truck I was given for my time up here.”

From where she was still laying on the couch, Olivia could be heard saying, “That’s not the what you should be handling this, Sully…” But any suggestion she was thinking of making to show how the situation, in her eyes, should have been handled never came, as she merely bundled herself back up and attempted sleeping once more before saying anything else.

“Ahem, I think I’d know how to handle a situation I specifically tried avoiding in the first place!” Sully, shaking her head at the two ladies at the door, honestly wished that Olivia _had_ said something else to maybe sprinkle in some of her rational thinking over the situation, but her silence and prompt return to sleep made that not possible. “I’m going to wait for my other clothes to dry, change back into them to fish the chains out of the back of the truck, in case I, and I alone, need to drive somewhere to save all our skins while there’s still feet of snow on the ground.”

“So that’s how it’s going to be?” Maribelle’s voice was shaking, trembling both from the cold and from the gravity of the situation. “You’re going to make us suffer for something we didn’t know to take seriously?”

“Honestly, don’t think there’s any other way to do it. Besides, I’m sure your husbands would be on my side for this.” Glancing towards where Olivia was still laying, Sully added, “Sure hers would be too. Hell, I bet I could call them out in Plegia right now and tell them what’s going on and—“

“Don’t!” Lissa blurted out, looking to Sully with her eyes almost as wide as dinner plates. “Maribelle, she’s already told Frederick and he’s told the rest, I’m sure, so we don’t need you getting wrapped up in talking to any of them and only adding fuel to their anger at us.”

The smirk that appeared on Sully’s lips as she heard the desperation in Lissa’s voice was one of the smuggest smiles she’d ever managed in her life. “No one said I’d be calling anyone relating back to any of you, now did they?” She had expected one of the two to start yelling at her about how calling the person she was referring to was a bad idea, about how they didn’t want him getting involved either, but when both of them started laughing, despite the situation, she realized that her threatening to involve Vaike really only showed that she did care about him to some extent.

“Go on and tell him, I’m sure he’ll just shrug it off,” Maribelle said, curbing her giggles to hug Lissa a bit tighter than she had so far. “Say it’s only fitting this happened to us, you know how his mind works better than either of us ever could so you know that it’s the truth.”

Rather than argue that it wasn’t true, even though she knew deep down that if she were to call Vaike and tell him, that would be his exact reaction to a T, Sully merely stepped towards the door to the stable, opening it and stepping outside. “I’ll be taking care of the horses until my clothes dry out,” she said, her voice sharp as she slammed the door shut. As she collected her thoughts and grumbled to herself about how she should have been listened to the previous day, she could hear kids whining and complaining inside the cabin, her door-slam enough to wake everyone up.

That wasn’t her problem, just like getting those ladies anywhere but her cabin wasn’t either. She wasn’t their babysitter, she was running a horse camp. There were bigger and more important things to be focusing on at the moment, and their plight? That wasn’t anywhere close to one of them.

* * *

The call came after a night where Vaike wasn't honestly sure he’d ever get to sleep, having to share a room with a very agitated and on-edge man who was constantly pacing around waiting for some message that never came. When morning rolled around and all three of the Ylissean officers had finally dragged themselves down to the lobby for breakfast, it was shaping up to be a day just like the first one in Plegia, one spent wondering what might have happened to a couple of wayward ladies.

But when Frederick’s phone started ringing, its screen alight with the contact information for Maribelle, he quickly jumped on it and let everyone breathe a bit easier. “Glad t’see she calls eventually,” Vaike remarked as Frederick answered the phone. “Don't know why women don't just call right away, though.”

“That's something we are going to have to stress as an imperative action before the next time something like this happens,” Chrom added, casting a glance towards Lon’qu, who sitting at the end of their table and was now eyeing his phone as if it was going to spontaneously start ringing as well. “I thought Emmeryn had taught Lissa and I better than to do this, but—”

“Your sister's always been horrible at calling when necessary. Remember, her pullin’ that stunt is what got her broken up with me and married to the Feroxi guy.” Not caring that he was easily able to be heard (because as far as he was concerned, he hadn't said anything rude), Vaike crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. “Guess y’shoulda worked harder on teachin’ her right.”

Chrom chuckled, reaching across the table to pull Vaike’s plate closer to him, an action that made the blond sit back straight and grab his plate for himself. “I would have figured that the man who refers to himself as ‘Teach' would have been able to, well, _teach_ her that lesson in the...how many? years you spent dating her.”

“Ha, very funny on that one, Chrom. Ol’ Vaike ain't really that great of a teacher, obviously.” Even in trying to make lighthearted conversation, he could feel himself carefully picking his words, trying to keep himself from saying something out of line with the audience he had. One long, rough night of sleep did wonders on making a guy not want to be as much of a fool in front of everyone as he had been so far. “And, uh, he ain't really that great of a boyfriend for any gal as high-maintenance as she was.”

“What a surprise, hearing you not boasting about your own greatness for once.” Chrom smiled at Vaike, getting a fleeting grin in return, but they were interrupted by the sound of someone’s fist hitting the table, rattling the dishes in front of them all. Both men looked at Lon’qu, but he hadn’t moved an inch, so their eyes tracked down to the other side of the table, where Frederick had let one of his hands slam down, nearly knocking over everything he had in front of him.

“Do we, uh, ask what’s up?” Vaike suggested, looking back at Chrom and noticing how the blue-haired man seemed to be evaluating the situation. “Or do we—oh gods damn it never mind.” The second idea was thrown away when he saw Lon’qu getting up and walking over to where Frederick was, his own phone in hand. “Looks like someone else is already on it, guess my time carin’ ‘bout this is over.”

Chrom waved a hand at him to get him to shush himself, as he watched what was happening intently. Frederick was talking in whispers, trying not to let himself be overheard by anyone, but with everyone’s eyes and focus on him he was learning fast that keeping the contents of his conversation to himself was going to be impossible. “I can’t believe a word I’m hearing from you right now, Maribelle,” he said loudly enough for all to hear, which was not the most reassuring words to hear at any given time. “You can cry all you want in your attempt to get me to pity you, but in the end…this was all your fault. You caused this. And you better think of a way to fix it.”

He hastily ended his call, knowing that three people were listening to him and waiting for him to give some sort of explanation as to what happened. “I don’t mean to pry into your personal matters, but…” Lon’qu cleared his throat, leaning towards Frederick with some sort of pressing agenda in mind. “Did they manage to make it home last night?”

“Give me a minute to collect myself and my thoughts before I even try answering that.” There were very few times in anyone’s memory that involved Frederick being so abrupt and unwilling to provide information, so when he got up and walked from the table without the slightest of explanations, it was obvious that what he’d been told was somehow worse than the news that the ladies had gone up to the horse camp in the first place.

“Huh, here I was thinkin’ that this trip couldn’t manage to get worse, but here we are, sittin’ at the table waitin’ on Frederick of all people t’tell us somethin’.” Vaike shook his head, giving a small laugh. “Who woulda thought this would be happenin’ t’us?”

“Listen, I know you’re trying to make light of things, but it’s clear that something’s amiss and—what’s that noise? Whose phone is that?” Chrom went from being a scolding authority figure to trying to discover who was the lucky one to be getting some sort of contact in a flash, looking from his own phone to Lon’qu with his completely silent one. “…Vaike? Is that yours…?”

Vaike shrugged, reaching for his phone in his pocket, at the same moment that the ringtone went silent. “Might’ve been, wasn’t really paying attention,” he said as he grabbed it and pulled it out, looking at it and expecting for there to be no notifications on it whatsoever. He was shocked to see that the missed call _had_ been for him, but what was more shocking was the fact that the same number that had just called had also sent him a message. Rather than letting anyone know that, or who the things were from, he put on the straightest face he could muster and told them, “Nope, wasn’t the Vaike’s phone. Must’ve been someone else in the room.”

“Something tells me you’re lying about that but…eh, doesn’t matter.” Shaking his head, Chrom went to talking to Lon’qu about something or other, some kind of idle chatter that had no real purpose but calming their nerves as they waited for Frederick to come back to explain things. Taking the opportunity that their distraction gave him, Vaike went straight to checking that message he’d received, trying his hardest to keep his reaction quiet when he read the short and sweet message coming from someone up at the cabin.

That reaction was a lot easier to keep quiet than he’d expected, at the exchange of it being completely obvious that he was reacting to something just based on his facial expression. The genuinely surprised smile on his lips, the color rising in his cheeks…it was clear that whatever he’d been sent, it was greatly appreciated, to the point that he was unsure of how to even respond to it. And with what was about to unfold around him, he didn’t have the time to think about that response, not when he needed to be giving the to-be drama the attention it deserved.

When Frederick came back to the table, he seemed to be forcing himself to be composed, but judging by how his arms seemed to be shaking at his restraint, it wasn’t an easy façade to be keeping up. “Now that I have properly let this all sink in, I have some bad news to share with you all. No, no one’s died, but _someone_ decided to continue going against her better judgment once again, and this time there may end up being dire consequences.”

“Define ‘dire’ and what it means here,” Chrom said, putting a hand on Lon’qu’s shoulder to try and wordlessly tell the man that he’d handle the questioning. “They didn’t die on their way home yesterday, did they? But they couldn’t…Olivia wouldn’t have kept quiet on that any longer…they’re not…?”

“They didn’t die, that’s correct, but they didn’t leave either.” Frederick exhaled all his pent-up anger and frustration in one long breath, seeing the faces of the highly-involved men (and the one only marginally caring at this point) go from worried to completely wide-eyed and not understanding. “They didn’t return to Ylisstol as they were told to, and it seems that a snowstorm hit overnight and—“

“Lissa! Oh gods!” Lon’qu brushed Chrom’s hand off of him and, after grabbing his phone, jumped from his seat and disappeared from view, his mind immediately going to every and any bad conclusion that a man in his position rightfully would have.

“—yes, that was what I was afraid of him doing when I told him.” Shaking his head, Frederick looked at Chrom, who was rubbing at the sides of his head. “Sir, should you go chase him down to comfort him in this time, or should I?”

“I’ll do it.” Bringing himself to his feet, Chrom sighed and tilted his head back. “Lissa…of all the times to let her talk you into something, this really wasn’t a good one.” With that, he went to go hunt Lon’qu down, as well as possibly make a call or two of his own.

That left Frederick and Vaike at the table, and while one man was still shaking his head and muttering his wife’s name under his breath, not knowing the extent of her involvement in the decision to stay up at the camp, the other man had a much different name on the tip of his tongue. For the first time in years, the woman on Vaike’s mind wasn’t one that had abandoned him, even though this was the one time when her well-being would have been an appropriate thought.


	7. A Quest to Do Right

Shovel in hand, Sully was making quick work of digging the truck out of the snowbank it had found itself buried in, even though she wasn’t sure why she was doing it. It might have been something about how, deep down, she knew some form of reliable transportation with the current road conditions might have been it, or maybe it was just because she had said the previous night that she was going to chain the truck’s tires the following day. Either way, she was outside in the cold, drenching her clothes for a second time with the snow, trying to unbury the truck so she could do as she’d said and get the chains on the tires.

“I thought you said you were going out to the horses,” she heard Olivia softly say, causing her to look towards the side door to the cabin to see the pink-haired woman standing there, blanket wrapped around her, with the door shut behind her. “I would have believed that until Lucina went to find you and you weren’t there. Is something wrong?”

With a grunt, she replied, “No way, just doing as I told you I would on the drive back last night. Got to put the chains on in case _we_ need to go somewhere with the roads being like they are. Just means I’ve got to—“ she grunted again, this time throwing a shovel full of snow over her shoulder, “—dig the damn truck out, that’s all.”

“I’m sure that’s what it is, definitely.” The tone Olivia took, still soft but showing no nonsense whatsoever, gave Sully the impression that she was out there for a different reason than asking about where she was and what she was doing. “If you were meaning to do this now, wouldn’t you be wearing something a bit more fitting for the elements?”

“Other clothes got soaked when I went to restart the generator earlier, I’ll dress warmer when my warmer clothes aren’t wet.” Throwing more snow out of the bed of the truck, Sully’s eyes lit up at what she’d uncovered. “Bingo, found the box of chains. Have you, er, ever messed with these things before?”

With a laugh, Olivia asked, “What do you mean? You’ve talked about putting them on but you don’t know how to do it?”

Flashbacks to a particular memory came to Sully’s mind as she tried to answer the question, the mental image of someone’s snow-covered back and an argument about missing chains taking her focus away from her response. “I, uh, might have been present for someone putting them on once,” she admitted, not wanting to name the specific someone (even though, judging by the smug smile Olivia wore for a few seconds, it was glaringly obvious). “Don’t worry, I’ll probably figure it out on my own. Not like we’re going to need them if I don’t, though.”

“I understand why you have that particular stance on the situation, but couldn’t you possibly make an exception if something were to happen?” Olivia looked to Sully with another smile, this one serene and trying to earn some agreement. “I would hate for anything to go wrong and for the burden to be on all our shoulders for it.”

“Those ladies dug their hole the moment they decided to not leave yesterday, I’m not bailing them out of this one.” Sully threw her shovel down towards the cabin before jumping out of the truck, landing in a snow drift that was nearly waist-high with the box of chains being held over her head. “Their decision to stay was their choice, and whatever hell it brings isn’t anything I’m worrying myself with.” She set the box down on the snow, it sinking a bit until it had compacted enough snow underneath it to not drop further, and then she glanced over the truck at where Olivia was still standing by the door, her smile still plastered on her face. “No, Olivia, I’m not changing my mind on this.”

“Even if—“

She shook her head, finally getting that other woman’s smile to turn into a frown. “Do you think I’m the kind of idiot to invite the ex-girlfriend of the guy I’m borrowing a truck from into his vehicle? If she’s getting down to town while it’s snowy, it’s not going to be with me. End of story.” Despite the loud sigh she heard Olivia give, she wasn’t going to change her opinion for anything. They could have stood outside arguing back and forth about whether she should or not all day, but there was nothing that anyone was going to do to get her to change her mind.

When she heard the front door close, Olivia deciding to go back inside rather than stand in the snow, she felt like she should have followed and tried to not sound so brash about her opinion, but she shrugged it off. It didn’t matter in the end if her decision was offensive, she wasn’t the one who had ignored all reason and chosen to stay in the mountains when storm warnings had been going off continuously. If anything, she was being nice by even letting them stay after everything; she could have told them to brave the roads on their own in the car Maribelle had driven up there in the first place, and that undoubtedly would have been a worse fate than being stuck at the cabin.

Her head turned to where said car should have been visible, but all she saw was snow that had both been naturally piled and thrown off the truck, completely burying the small car. Again she shrugged it off, looking down to the chains she was supposed to be putting on the tires and trying to mentally psyche herself up for the task of getting them on. Even though she had been present one time for someone doing it, she hadn’t bothered paying attention to what had been done—how was she supposed to know that, three and a half years later, she’d be the one with that truck trying to do that exact thing? “Damn it Vaike, wish you were here to show me how this is done,” she said to herself, before realizing what exactly she had said and groaning at herself. “I-I mean, I wish you’d have taught me this before you loaned me the truck.”

If he was able to have heard her, he’d have been laughing at her slip-up, which didn’t do anything but make her more frustrated with what she’d said. “Ugh, I’m never going to figure this out on my own, so how the hell am I supposed to do it? Can’t ask prissy women to help out, they wouldn’t have a clue. None of those kids would know, and Olivia already refused to help me out.” She reached into the box and pulled out a tangled mess of the chains and sighed, setting them down without a second thought. “Nope, not wasting my energy fighting with this, if it becomes necessary I’ll do it then, but right now…not happening.”

Rather than leave the box in the snow to become soggy beyond recognition, she hoisted it back up and carried it with her to the door, dropping it where she’d shoveled out a small walkway. After promptly kicking it to show her displeasure with the contents, she opened the door and stomped the snow off of her clothes in the doorway before walking inside, preparing to strip herself down out of the wet clothes and change into her third outfit of the day as soon as she could get into the bedroom. When she was halfway between the main door and the one to the bedroom, she heard a shrill voice call out to her that made her roll her eyes. “Do _not_ go in that room if you know what’s good for you!” Maribelle warned, from where she was once again sitting on the countertop. “Lissa has requested that none of us bother her right now, and that includes you.”

“For all intents and purposes, this cabin’s mine right now, and I’ll go wherever I damn well feel like going,” Sully snapped back, still brushing snow off of herself. “Besides, I’m not letting myself stay cold and wet all day just because she’s having some sort of diva moment.” That warning had been doomed from the moment Maribelle opened her mouth to give it, and even though she was sure there was some good reason that it had been given, it simply wasn’t going to be followed. She finished crossing the room and opened the bedroom’s door, only to slam it shut when the loud sounds of wailing came from the other side.

“I told you she didn’t want any of us bothering her.” Sounding smug, Maribelle jumped down from the counter and came to stand beside Sully, placing a hand on her back for all of two seconds before she retracted it, the cold from outside still residing in the clothing. “Ever since you said you wouldn’t take us down to Ylisstol and stormed outside, she’s been a crying mess. She thinks you hate her and want her to die or something like that.”

“I wouldn’t go that far with it,” Sully muttered, before looking at Maribelle with a straight face. “But whatever, what am I supposed to do about it? There’s a laundry list of reasons why I’m not bothering with taking you, first and foremost being that I warned you this would happen if you didn’t leave.”

For being in the stickiest situation of her life, Maribelle somehow managed to reply without breaking down into tears herself. “I’m well aware of that, actually,” she said, twisting one of her ringlets around her fingers. “Listen, we made some real mistakes on this one, mistakes that will no doubt have consequences we will have to face, but please help us out on this. Please help her. She’s worried that something’s going to go wrong if we’re stuck up here for as long as you think we will be.”

“Of course something’s going to go wrong, she’s supposed to be in town tomorrow to be forced into having that kid, isn’t she?” Watching as Maribelle slowly nodded, the look of fear and worry prominent in her eyes, Sully couldn’t help but sigh before she continued speaking. “Now I’m not exactly an expert on babies or any of that—you two grown ladies here would know a lot more than I would—but if they’re setting dates for that kind of thing, shouldn’t you, I don’t know, follow them?”

Maribelle’s nodding picked up intensity as she glanced towards the bedroom door, aware of the crying mess on the other side. “She’s not always the best when it comes to following the rules, obviously,” she said, biting her lip. “And neither am I, getting her into this mess when I _did_ know what was supposed to be happening tomorrow!”

“Don’t start throwing a pity party for yourself here, I’m not going to change my mind if you start sobbing or whatever.” Sully waited for Maribelle to say or do something to justify her having just said that, but when the only thing she did was continue messing with her hair, she realized that there wasn’t going to be any kind of pity party there. She wasn’t looking for forgiveness for her own actions, she merely wanted something to be done for her friend who needed it.

That something, however, wasn’t going to be done by Sully herself, and everyone was more than aware of that. “I’m not going to ask you to change your mind on taking us yourself, because I have come to terms that your denial of driving us is a fair punishment for what we did, but…” Maribelle’s voice started wavering for a moment, time during which Sully began looking like she was going to tune out what followed if it kept up, but she straightened out her tone as she motioned towards the bedroom door. “All I can ask is that you help her out somehow. Tell her you were lying about how long it’ll take for the roads to clear. Tell her that if things do get bad, you’ll find some way to get her out of here. Just something.”

“Something…eh, you know what, I’ll consider it.” Her “consideration” nothing more than a flippant remark, Sully went back to opening the door to the bedroom, still focused on changing into drier clothes more than she was on anything else. Yes, the crying inside was an annoyance, but in the thirty seconds it would take for her to change, she was sure she could get over the crying.

It would have been a whole lot easier if the person crying was, for instance, laying in the bed or sitting down somewhere. But when Sully entered the room and saw Lissa leaning against the wall as she was crying, she had to take a moment to ask herself if getting dry clothes was worth this amount of being watched. “I th-thought I told Maribelle to tell everyone to stay out,” she tearfully said, wiping her eyes with her arm. “I guess I can’t trust her to do anything, now can I?”

“I’m not here to talk to you, sorry,” Sully replied, opening one of the drawers in the dresser to pull out a dry pair of pants. Changing could happen somewhere else, she just needed to get something to change into. “You keep trying to make it sound like you did nothing wrong here and I’ll be on my way.”

“I did lots of things wrong, I know I did! I don’t need you…I didn’t ask for you to remind me of it!” While Sully had her head in the dresser trying now to pick out a shirt as quickly as possible, she heard what sounded like something sliding, and she perked up to watch as Lissa was leaning further and further down on the wall until she was sitting on the floor. Finding the behavior over the top and unnecessary, she went right back to clothes-hunting, only to be stopped again by a comment. “And now I’m going to end up stuck here and having my baby here and you’re going to be unhelpful through all of it just because of who I used to date before all this!”

Sighing, Sully got her head out of the dresser once more and spun on the toes of her shoes, the water on the bottom making the feat quite easy. “Listen here, my lack of wanting to help you entirely rests on the fact that you and Maribelle both ignored my every word, stayed here longer than I had allowed, and are now begging me to go out of my way to right the wrongs you made. It has nothing, and I mean nothing, to do with anyone you might have dated once upon a time.”

“Then forget about taking us to Ylisstol.” Her words were still being spoken as she cried, but Lissa was trying her hardest to not let her tears drown out what she was saying. “I know there’s towns closer than there, snow or no snow, so just take me to one of those. I’ll manage to do this without any chance of my husband getting to be with me on time.”

Rather than trying to make sense of the last part right away, Sully was coming up with some sort of response as to why she couldn’t exactly take Lissa anywhere, but was struggling to come up with something that wasn’t “because I don’t want to” while also containing absolutely nothing about the reason she wasn’t going to let her get in that truck. Somewhere in the middle of that mental argument, that last sentence snuck into her focus and she audibly gasped, dropping the pants she was holding to raise her hands to her head, eyes going wide with shock. “You’re not pitching this fit because of what _might_ happen, are you?” she asked. “You’re doing it because you know what _will_ happen.”

“I wouldn’t say—okay, yes, I would say that!” Lissa’s crying was beginning to drown out her words, as she moved her arms to wrap them around her stomach. “I’ve known since Maribelle got me from my house that it was a matter of days before this would happen, judging by what all the books said and what everyone’s been telling me. But then she brought me here and I…I didn’t want to have to get back in the car again because driving makes me so uncomfortable, but now I’m stuck here and, oh gods, it’s just horrible!”

Sully was already patting down the pockets of the pants she was wearing, looking for her phone to use to call for someone else to come into the room to deal with this, because she had no intentions of actually doing so. When she couldn’t find it, she went looking in the pants she’d been wearing before she went out to the generator, still not finding any trace of her phone. She couldn’t be so rude as to just walk out and ask for someone’s help, which meant that she was stuck dealing with this on her own. “So the talk about that appointment tomorrow, was that a sympathy pull or what?”

“No, it was legitimate, I really did have something set up for tomorrow if my labor didn’t start on its own beforehand. I just, you know, didn’t think that it would start when I’m apparently eight hours away from where I’m supposed to be.” Lissa gave a shaky breath, looking up at Sully with tear-filled eyes. “You’re not going to help me even if I start actually having this baby here, just because I brought this upon myself.”

“That’s not—I didn’t—gods damn it, woman, you’re nothing but trouble for all of us!” Giving a loud screech in her frustration, Sully motioned for Lissa to just shut her mouth for a little bit as she dashed out of the room, wet shoes slipping on the floor and allowing for her to skid into the main room, nearly falling on her face but catching everyone’s attention in the meantime. “First of all, has anyone seen my phone?” she asked, looking around at the clueless faces all staring back at her, all wondering if a missing phone was worth the dramatic entrance. “Secondly, how long, exactly, does someone have after they think they’ve started labor to, uh, take care of things?”

“Did you just ask about labor?” Maribelle glanced to the still-opened bedroom door, not even waiting for Sully to answer her before she was on the move to check on her friend. “No, please no, don’t tell me that’s what this has come to…”

“Wish I could say it wasn’t,” Sully ended up saying, despite Maribelle already being gone before she got the words out. She was watching Olivia, seeing what that woman was going to do, but her reaction was to poke her head from her blanket cocoon and shake it, before going back to laying on the couch like she had been. “Come on, not bringing that up for my own sake. That damn sister-in-law of yours is in there just about to start spewing baby juices all over this cabin, and you’re going to just shake your head at me?”

The weak response she got was simple: “I might be a bit more hungover from the wine than I thought I was. Let me sleep this off and I will deal with it later.”

“Later doesn’t help me right now, Olivia!” Curling one hand into a fist, Sully shook it in the direction of the couch, only stopping when she saw both Inigo and Lucina come from around the corner, their heads hanging as they approached. “Oh, good, what are you two going to bring to the table. Got some sort of encyclopedic knowledge about babies on you?”

While Inigo shook his head, Lucina held her arms in front of her, her hands holding on to something that she revealed when she flipped her palms up. Resting in her hands was the missing phone that Sully had been looking for minutes before. “You threw this last night and I grabbed it to keep it safe, but I didn’t know you’d wanted it back right away,” she explained, as the redhead snatched it and brought it in close to her. “I promise, I didn’t do anything with it aside from watch it.”

“I might have looked some things about ladies up on it,” Inigo added, “but they weren’t bad things. Me and Lucy had a conversation about ladies that I needed some pictures to help me out with. Don’t worry, I didn’t save anything.” The story was ignored, as Sully was already heading towards the door to the cabin, her phone still being clung to, and once she was back outside the kids shared a suspicious look between them, giving a high-five at a job well done.

The snow hadn’t melted an inch in the time Sully had been inside, and that probably wasn’t going to change. She had two things in mind that she needed to take care of right then, to set things in a better direction than they currently were, and one of them required her being outside. Maybe it was a good thing that she hadn’t changed into dry clothes, she told herself as she tucked her phone into her pocket, grabbing the shovel and starting work on unburying one of the other cars. Maybe it was for the best that things happened this way.

If all else failed, when she was done with what she was about to do, maybe someone would be able to help her get those chains on those tires after all.

* * *

The scene at the station in Ylisse was the same as it had been every other day that Chrom had been gone, more or less. Robin was rather proud of the officers and how they’d managed to hold up under his leadership, even if his presence was a lot different than Chrom’s ever could be. He had even started getting used to the weird hours that being the only person in charge was leaving him with, and that meant that his mid-afternoon appearance at the station to check on everyone and initiate the shift change was something that he was actually looking forward to. Yes, the weird shifts he’d been working were taking a toll on his time with his wife and children, but he knew that there wasn’t much longer that he’d be doing this in Chrom’s place.

“It’s only today and tomorrow, then Chrom’ll be back to work and I’ll get the days off I’d been promised,” he told himself as he parked in his spot behind the station, getting out and checking the back perimeter of the building before heading inside. Unlike normal, he didn’t have an eager assistant waiting to speak with him when he walked through the doors, as Miriel was enjoying her own day off, but he knew he could manage one evening without her hen-pecking everything he did. “Let’s get through this without any problems, which should be easy enough. Haven’t had any serious crimes or issues all week to deal with, what’s going to change about that today?”

“Oh, Robin!” Cordelia greeted, coming from the wing of the station where her office was to meet up with the temporary commander. “Come quickly, we’ve all got a bit of a mess we’re struggling to comprehend, and maybe you’ll be able to make sense of things for us!”

Just as quickly as he’d been readying himself for an easy night, those hopes were dashed. “Er, certainly, Cordelia,” he replied, following behind her as she turned around and headed straight back for where she’d come from. Upon their arrival, he was able to see that she wasn’t kidding when she said they all had an issue, as everyone who logically would have been there at that moment was gathered in the hallway between the small offices, a heated argument brewing. “Whoa now, what’s happening here?” he asked, hoping that someone would fill him in quickly and painlessly.

“I should have told you while we walked,” Cordelia said sheepishly, smacking herself on the forehead before she went ahead and explained. “Just a few minutes ago, we received a call from someone we know in Ferox requesting the support of a Ylissean officer with snow-driving experience.” Robin’s eyes bounced back and forth as he asked himself why someone would do that, and while he debated whether or not his conclusion could be correct, she continued speaking. “If it were just some Feroxi citizen, we would have deferred the emergency call to their country’s police force, but, as you could guess, this wasn’t someone native to Ferox.”

Nodding, those being the words he’d expected, Robin followed with, “It was Sully, wasn’t it?” When Cordelia quickly nodded in return, his face scrunched in thought. “But why would she…oh. By chance, does this have to do with—“

“They seem to have had a snowstorm hit overnight, and with the road conditions being so bad up there, she doesn’t want to risk sending anyone down the mountain passes without proper driving experience or a vehicle capable of it.” Cordelia pursed her lips together, before giving a sweeping arm motion at the conversation happening behind her. “Between all of us enlisted in the Ylissean police force, both full-time and on a temporary basis, there are three people known to have vehicles that are snow-ready, that could make the drive up to her location in Ferox and back.”

“And as I have told everyone multiple times now, it would be a couple of hours before I could get my vehicle here into town,” Panne said, overhearing what Cordelia had just said and turning to Robin to give her own defense. “I did not drive it here for myself, I would have to go out of the way to get it, which is just wasting time.”

“You guys are arguing with her about that?” Robin asked, cocking an eyebrow up at Cordelia, who gave a small shrug. “If time and safety are the two important things here, we can’t have her going hours out of the way to get the vehicle to be safe. Who else is on the short list…aside from the obvious ‘no’.”

That was when Cordelia stiffened up, her chest raising as she drew in a sharp breath. “That’s where it gets complicated, I’m afraid,” she told him, “and that’s why we’ve been arguing with Panne over her ability to get her own vehicle.”

Robin ran a hand down his face, feeling slightly helpless in the current conversation. “Okay, lay it on me. Who is it?”

“Counting the obvious one as Vaike, because neither he nor his truck are in town right now, that would leave only Stahl as our possible driver up to the camp.” Cordelia glanced at everyone else who was gathered in the hall, all of them having fallen silent as she broke that news. Robin could see the looks of almost desperation in a few people’s eyes—he could tell that no one wanted to send Stahl, for whatever reason. “He knows the way, we’re all pretty sure, but him going would leave the force without a Ylisstol native manning the station overnight, which I don’t think is what we want.”

“I’ve been with this force for over a year now, and I’m still sure there are city roads I don’t know,” Nowi put in, breaking the group’s silence with her admission, “and if something were to happen tonight would you really want me going out getting myself lost looking for wherever the crime scene is?”

“Da, the same is true for longtime loan Gregor.” With a nod towards Nowi for being the one to first say something, Gregor looked at Robin with eyes that would be considered doe-like if they weren’t on the face of a middle-aged man. “Perhaps sending someone else is the best for this, yes?”

“I’m not going,” Panne bluntly said, crossing her arms over her chest. “While I also know where this horse camp is, I am not making the drive to it if it requires going out of my way and wasting everyone’s time to get my own vehicle.”

Running his hand down his face again, Robin sighed. “Okay, I get it. Sending Stahl’s a bad idea because he knows the town better than any of the rest of you overnighters, but he’s most likely the only one we _can_ send, unless someone else wanted to drive his car up there for him.” The resounding lack of offers that came from the suggestion sealed the fate, leaving Robin to look for the nearest clock he could find and mentally calculate the time. “Gah, you guys are hopeless. A fellow officer calls for help and none of you are willing to do it. Someone get Stahl over here so we can fill him in on his task, I’ll pull the overnight role he fills in case something happens.”

“That’s really cool of you, sir!” Ricken said, before grabbing the bag he had sitting at his feet. “I’ll make the call to him before I leave for the night, wish I could be of more help than that, but…” He quieted himself, smiling at Robin before running into his own office to place that particular call.

“Are you sure that’s what you want to do?” Tilting her head at Robin at his offer, Cordelia waited for him to answer, but when all he did was sigh again, she knew that he was doing it out of necessity, not want. “I’ll spend the night with Sumia and the girls, then. It’s the kindest gesture I can give to your family for your sacrifice.”

“My sacrifice?” Robin laughed. “I’m not the one driving up into the snowy Feroxi mountains to answer a call. If you’re going to do anything for anyone, make it be for Stahl.”

The corners of Cordelia’s mouth ticked upward. “Well, who says I can’t do both?” she asked. “I’ll get some supplies after I leave here, and tonight I’ll spend time baking with your family, so that when Stahl comes back tomorrow, he has some goodies waiting for him.” She started beaming as her idea sunk in. “Ha, he’ll do anything for food, even daring rescue missions like this one!”

“As long as what you make doesn’t find its way into the hands of undeserving others, I guess I don’t see a problem with you roping my family into this plan.” Robin watched as Cordelia’s face darkened for a second, before she hastily walked off without another word. “I’m going to take that as her realizing that I know her game all too well.” Shaking the whole thing off, he looked at the remaining officers still there in the hall. “Now, you all get back to work, we’re going to have a fun night here together.”

He heard one grumble about a definition of fun and one loud cheer about how it was going to be a great night, but the dispersal was uneventful other than that. After everyone was in their offices where they belonged, he turned around and headed for his own office, the sign at the door labeling him as an investigator covered up with a makeshift one that said “police chief” on it. There wasn’t much he was thinking about doing while in there, aside from making calls to his wife to let her know the change in plans, but when he opened the door he saw a stack of papers taller than he’d seen before in there. “Are you kidding me, is this what happens when I don’t have an assistant doing the paperwork for me?” he asked, approaching his desk to look at the top sheet on the stack. It was about an animal rescue request that had been fulfilled days beforehand. “I’m going to have to spend the night reorganizing this, I suppose.”

Settling into his desk, Robin was ready to get started on the task he’d discovered for himself, expecting to be told when the person of the hour arrived so that he could personally do the mission debriefing for him. But when Stahl showed up at the station almost an hour later, dressed in summer-like clothing but with a bag filled with winter clothes on his back, his first stop was at the temporary commander’s office, he found that the door was closed and the sounds of frustrating work happening on the other side were more than enough to keep him from trying to enter. “Don’t want to make a bad impression on Robin, even though I’m here to help out,” he said to himself, looking around at the empty offices there in that section of the station. “I’m sure someone else can tell me what’s going on.”

After dropping his bag in his own office so he didn’t need to be toting it around, he headed straight for where the station’s secretary kept her office; when he found that the lights were out and the door was firmly shut, he figured that it meant that Miriel wasn’t around and therefore she wasn’t usable as a source. “Well damn, who else can I go to on this?” he asked out loud, hoping someone would hear him. “Ricken’s the one who called me, but he said he was leaving, and I doubt any of the night folks would know a thing about this. But who does that leave? No one, I think.”

He sighed, scratching at the back of his messy head of hair. “Maybe this was all a joke to get me to come in earlier? But why would Ricken do such a thing to me? Kid’s too nice to do that to anyone, let alone someone who keeps this city safe night after night.” His stomach growled then, causing him to laugh. “I guess I can figure out what all this is about after I get something to eat, I suppose. I wonder if anyone brought any snacks for the break room today, or if it’s just the same old stuff.”

Upon reaching the break room, Stahl found that he wasn’t the only person in there, but it didn’t seem like the other person realized he was there, so he knocked on the door. Cordelia swung her head around, her hair nearly knocking a stack of cups to the ground. “Oh, you’re here finally! I’ve been waiting for you to give you some incentive on going up to Ferox today, even though I’m sure you’d do it anyway.”

“Yeah, uh, I’d definitely do it anyway, but why am I going? Haven’t been told that part yet, honestly, and it’s kind of important to the whole deal.” As he watched, Cordelia laughed and brushed her hair back behind her shoulders, acting as if he hadn’t just asked an important question. “Uh, hello? You are going to tell me, right?”

She smiled. “Of course I am. I’ll talk while you eat, since once you leave here I’m sure you’re not going to have the time to stop.” That was when she motioned to what she’d been setting up, a small assortment of snacks that she’d either just run out to buy, or that she’d been stashing somewhere in the station. His eyes lit up at the selection, grabbing everything he wanted, all while she kept smiling on. “If you want more things like this, I hope you come back from Ferox safely.”

“That’s a done deal, I always love food gifts, but why does it have to be me you’re showering with this stuff? Don’t you, I don’t know, have someone else you could be spoiling with treats?” Popping one of the cookies he’d grabbed into his mouth, Stahl saw Cordelia’s eyes shift downward for a moment before she walked out of the break room without another word. His mouth still full, he called out after her, “Hey, wait a second! Come back!” before chasing her out on his own, dropping crumbs along the way.

She finally stopped walking once she was in front of her office, turning to face him right as he caught up with her. “Did you think I was going to tell you in there?” she teasingly asked, not sounding offended or hurt or anything that would have justified such a dramatic turn from the point of first conversation. “Come on, if anyone else is to hear what I’m going to tell you, they might derail what I’m saying and we can’t have that.”

“I guess that makes sen—whoa!” Mid-sentence, she reached for him and pulled him into her office, slamming the door closed behind him. The room was cramped as always, although it looked a lot smaller to him actually being inside of it for once. “So what’s going on, why am I being sent to Ferox today? Didn’t they just get hit by a snowstorm in the high mountains?”

“They did, and that’s actually why we need you to go.” Cordelia sat on the edge of her desk, leaning forward enough to rest her elbows on her legs so her head could rest on her hands. “It’s all kind of a mess, and I’d really been advocating for someone who wasn’t you to go, but since she refused it’s all up to you.”

“Up to me? That doesn’t answer what’s going on!” With a laugh, Stahl leaned up against the door and looked across the room at Cordelia, her eyes meeting his and giving no hints as to why she was being so cryptic. “You are going to tell me, aren’t you?”

She smiled at him, her eyes not shifting even as her cheeks rose. “I am going to tell you, but I’m savoring the moment I’m getting with you. You know, it’s always so hard to get to spend time with you when you’re here at night and I’m here during the day.”

“That’s what everyone says, and it’s still not exactly answering the question…” Stahl could feel Cordelia’s gaze, which led him to shift his eyes up to the ceiling, breaking her stare and her concentration. “Besides, we always make what time we do get to talk work for us. But this shouldn’t be like that, since I got called in here and really need to know why.”

“You’re right, I should tell you. You might want to eat quickly, because as soon as I’m done talking you’re going to want to head out.” Stahl nodded at Cordelia’s request, putting another cookie in his mouth, and while he was distracted by that she began her explanation. “We here at the station received a call from a Feroxi location requesting the assistance of a Ylissean officer capable of driving in the snow,” she started, much like she had when she’d told Robin this exact same story. “And you, by the luck of the draw, or by the refusal of the one other person known to have a weather-ready vehicle, have been chosen to be the driver for the rescue mission.”

“Rescue mission?” he asked, sputtering crumbs everywhere as his mouth was still half-full with cookie. “I don’t know if I’m the right guy for that job…”

Grimacing at the animal-like display, Cordelia continued with, “It doesn’t matter if you’re the right guy or not, what matters is that you’re the one who has to do it. Sully said it’s about an eight-hour trip up there in the snow, and—“

“Sully? You mean up to the horse camp? I know the way up there, I’ve had to drive that in the snow before with her!” Swallowing down what he had in his mouth to stop being so rude, Stahl said, “I can’t believe that I’m having to do this by myself this time, but I guess it’s good that I already know the way! Why’s it a rescue mission, though? Did someone get hurt while riding? But that wouldn’t explain why it needs to be someone here going up there, would it? There’s bound to be places closer.”

“There are, but this is a special kind of emergency that requires returning to Ylisstol immediately.” Cordelia lifted her head and let her arms lie flat on her legs, looking straight at Stahl as he put another cookie in his mouth. “And, as she kindly put it, it would be rude of her to leave people up at the camp to drive others down here and back.”

This time, he nearly choked on what he was chewing while trying to swallow it to speak without being rude. After gasping for air for a moment and sputtering to try and get control of things, he was finally able to talk again. “So you’re saying that this isn’t anything to do with Chrom’s family then, right?”

“Not…exactly.” Turning to look away from him for a moment, Cordelia sighed. “It’s not his wife or either of his children, but it is his sister. We don’t _know_ if Chrom knows what’s going on, but regardless of if he does or not, we need you to bring her back here as carefully as you can, so that she can have her child here in town like she was supposed to.”

Stahl blinked a few times as the last couple of words sank in. “You mean she’s not supposed to be up there? What kind of people are we dealing with? Why am I having to fix their problems for them?”

“Would you rather Robin go over all this with you again, wasting more time that we don’t really have?” She most likely didn’t seem to sound irritated by the questioning, but there was no denying that her patience was growing thin with his reactions. When she looked back at him he was already leaning forward to open the door behind him to let himself out, and before she could say another word, apology or not, he was sliding out into the hallway to leave. “Wait, no, Stahl! Come back!” she called, jumping from her desk to chase him down, much like he’d had to follow her to her office in the first place.

“There’s no time to waste if there’s someone up there who really needs to not be up there!” he told her, speaking over his shoulder as he made his way down to his office. Cordelia’s footsteps were echoing in the hall directly behind his, as she tried to stop him so that she could get another word in. He reached the door and stepped inside to grab his bag, but when he turned she was standing there, having closed them inside. “What are you doing, Cordelia? I have to go, remember?”

She tensed up for a moment, before shaking her head and telling him what was on her mind. “I mentioned at the start that I have some food incentive for you to do this job right, and I don’t think I got to get that across to you. Bring her down here safely and quickly, and when you step foot in this station tomorrow you’ll be greeted with the biggest selection of treats that you’ve ever seen.”

“I…can appreciate that, sure, but don’t you know that any kind of food’s good for me? Sometimes I think when you’re making these offers at me, you’re thinking of someone else’s preferences at the same time.” Stahl smiled, even though what he had said was making Cordelia frown. “But if you do that, can you make sure that mister thief-y man Gaius doesn’t get a single crumb of anything?”

The frown disappeared behind a hand, as Cordelia covered the lower half of her face to hide any traces of an embarrassed blush that she felt coming on. “I make no promises, knowing his wily ways, but I will do my best to make sure that he doesn’t get anything.” Her eyes then widened, her stepping closer to where Stahl was. “But in case he manages to, I have something for you he won’t be getting from me.”

She was leaning into him as she spoke, dropping her hand and letting her eyes flutter shut, but Stahl, not really noticing what it was she was doing, walked right past her and headed for the door. “I’ll get it when I’m back,” he told her, hearing her gasp in shock at finding him not where he’d been moments before. “Which, you know, will be tomorrow. With all those treats waiting for me!”

“Yeah, all those treats,” she replied, following him out of the room. While he headed straight for the door to get on the road, she turned towards Robin’s office, prepared to tell her temporary commander everything that had just happened before she headed out for the evening, ready to make good on a promise she’d just made.

Part of what Stahl had been told in the call he’d gotten from Ricken was that he needed all of the seats in his car and he needed a change of warm clothes in case it was still freezing up in Ferox. He’d taken the time to make sure that all of his seats were properly in place before he headed to the station, and now that he was heading out he made sure that they still were in place before he threw his bag onto the passenger’s side seat and jumped into the driver’s seat, heading out of the station’s parking lot and out into town. Once he was on the main highway out of Ylisstol and up to the mountains, he let himself relax a little, mentally going over what all he’d been told before he was stuck on this mission.

“Somedays, I really think that those people just like using me to do whatever dirty work they don’t want to do,” he said to himself as he flipped through the radio stations that he was picking up outside of town, hearing nothing of note and ultimately letting it rest on some generic pop station that would serve well as background noise for his long drive. “I understand that all I’m good at is working overnights, eating everything in sight, and being completely average at what I try to do, but seriously, this drive’s a pain in good weather. Why make me do it when it’s bad?”

He tapped his fingers along the steering wheel to the beat of the song currently playing as he dwelled on what he’d just said. “Okay, I know why they’re making me do it. A rescue mission, and I’m the only one capable of doing it. But we all know that I’m not even their first choice, I’m the last resort. If someone else was able to do this, they’d have picked them over me!” He sighed, remembering that Cordelia had even said that there had been someone else in consideration, although he didn’t know who that was because the one person he could think of was completely unavailable.

“I bet if Vaike hadn’t had to go with Chrom to that conference, he’d have been asked to do this and he would’ve done it in a heartbeat.” The song changed, breaking for commercials, which gave Stahl time to focus on what he’d just said. “No, wait, why would that have been the case? They still would have asked me, because I doubt he could have been trusted to do this job right. That’s…one positive, I guess.”

He fell silent as his mind worked around that single positive thought he’d had, the dullness of the car ride already starting to get to him. If he was going to spend the entire drive dwelling on why him being chosen for this wasn’t the best of ideas, he was going to be in for a really bad ride. But if he could focus on why this was a good idea, then he could make some fun of it all. “Ignoring the part where I’m only doing this because no one else could, maybe it’s for the best that I am because I’ve been up to the camp before. I’ve had to drive Sully there before, although it was a pretty nice day and all she needed was someone capable of towing the horse trailer she was using there and back.”

His eyes tracked to the rear-view mirror, looking out the back of his car to see nothing in the open space behind him, not a single car, tree, or building visible for miles. “That was a fun thing I did with her, now that I think about it. It was a great trip, I got to know her better, and we told each other that we’d make a regular thing of it. But then I wasn’t available the next time she needed someone, she took Vaike instead, and ever since then she’s been focused on him and asking him for things and ignoring plain old me.” He focused on the road once more, shaking his head as he did. “Man, I really need to not think about the bad stuff. I’m doing this as a favor to her and to everyone else involved. I don’t have to compare what I’m doing to things that’ve happened in the past!”

Had he not been driving, he might have started rubbing at the sides of his head to try and clear his mind, but because of circumstances that wasn’t exactly the safest thing he could have done at that very moment. “I’m doing everyone a service. A great deed! I’m driving into the late hours of the night to get to a camp that’s hours away, with bad road conditions, just to rescue someone that I don’t really know.” A pause, where he furrowed his brow in thought. “At least, I don’t recall ever meeting her. But still! A stranger, being rescued by me, just because someone had to do it! That’s not something everyone gets to do.”

The radio came back from its commercials and his brow furrowed tighter at the sound of what came on. “I’m not going to suffer through bad music on the drive if I can avoid it,” he said as he reached to change what was on. It was a losing battle, but at least the idea of finding good music to listen to was enough to keep his mind away from thinking of himself as lesser when compared to anyone else, at least for a little bit. When he did find something, instead of just letting it be the background noise he needed, he turned it up and sang along with the song, getting rather passionate while out there alone on the dark highway.

One song turned into an entire mini-concert with himself as the only person in attendance, and by the time he’d finally run out of luck on finding good songs on the radio, due to losing stations quicker than he’d expected, he was starting to get into the mountainous area that signified the Ylisse-Ferox border. “Wow, two hours already,” he remarked when he looked at the clock. “Can’t believe I’m making this good of time. It’ll start getting dark soon, though, and if the roads are bad enough to require someone with snow-driving capabilities, then I should really start paying attention. That means,” he turned the volume of the radio back down, nearly silencing its static, “no more trying to listen to music.”

He sank back into his seat, looking out the windshield at the vast mountains that were standing in front of him, the upper half of them absolutely covered in snow. “Yeah, this is where this journey goes from a walk in the park that anyone could’ve done to something that only the skilled could do.” Glancing at the clock again, he slowly nodded at what he’d just said. “I’m the skilled one this time. Average? Who’s the average one here, that’s right, not me. Not someone who can get up into the mountains.”

Half an hour later, when he had to stop the car to put his warmer clothes on because the air temperature had changed from shorts weather to jacket and pants weather in such a short span of time, he was regretting the bragging he’d done to himself. “Maybe it would have been better if someone else had been able to do this after all, because I’m starting to think that this isn’t going to be very fun at all for me.” The surrounding ground had an inch or two of snow covering it, but the road was still clear, meaning that if things were going to get to the point of not being fun, he wasn’t there yet.

It wasn’t even another hour into the drive when the wheels of the car started spinning wildly on mounds of snow left on the road. Once again having to stop, this time to make sure that his tires were in good enough condition for what he was doing, Stahl took the time to look around at the road he was driving on, the last light of day illuminating his vision just well enough to let him know that it was only going to get worse. “This is…not good, at all,” he said, slumping against the side of his car. “Maybe when people ask if I can drive in the snow, I shouldn’t be telling them that I can, not when I can’t do it in this much. What we get in town sometimes? That’s easy and doable. This? Not so much.”

He kicked at the snow that covered the road, his foot freezing inside of his shoe as powdery snow blew everywhere. “Why’d Vaike have to be gone for this, him and that big truck of his would’ve been—wait a _second_ , why’s his truck not being used?” He got back up and into his car, shaking his head as he resumed driving. “He’s got the biggest truck meant for this kind of driving, why didn’t some ask him if they could borrow it for this trip?”

That question rested on his mind for quite some time, until he nearly slid into a snowbank on the side of the road and had to stop driving again to collect himself. “Man, if I were going to be up in these mountains regularly, I think I’d want to have a truck like his for driving around. If they can get a snowstorm like this in July, I don’t want to think about what it can be like in wintertime! I bet that…oh. I bet that Sully would have thought that same thing, which would mean that she has that truck, which means that no one else could use it because she’s got it and isn’t using it!” He smacked his forehead, groaning at how it had taken him so long to put those pieces together. “Gods damn it, here I was thinking I had a good case for why me doing this wasn’t the best option, but I guess I came up for why it still was.”

It had only been four hours of driving at that point. The night was still young, and so was the journey if he remembered where his destination was correctly. This was getting into the territory of being considered some kind of quest rather than just a mission, and with every time he almost wrecked and had to stop to keep himself from losing his steam, he might have been able to finish it in another four hours. But it took into the early morning hours, still in the complete darkness, before he was slowly turning into a valley that seemed to have been buried in snow a lot worse than the surrounding mountains. By that point, stopping every few minutes was the way it had to be, so that he could dig his car out from the deep snow that was everywhere; when he started that turn he had to stop no less than four times to make sure that he was not only on the road but that he was going to be able to rely on his headlights to see what was coming in front of him.

The valley’s entrance was a lot worse off than the valley itself, based on how he could actually see the vehicles parked in front of the cabin there, the metal bodies reflecting his headlights onto the snow. “I made it!” he exclaimed, punctuating his excitement with a long yawn. “I made it, and boy has it been an adventure. I wonder if they’ll mind if I take a nap before we head back into town. Can’t do that drive again while so tired.” He got his car parked as close to the others as he could manage, not wanting to cause any problems when leaving, and shut the vehicle off, but not before looking at the clock again. How was it that he’d left when it was still light out, and he was arriving up there just hours before dawn? “Er, maybe I should get a couple hours of sleep out here, so I’m not disturbing everyone who’s inside the cabin. I bet I’ve got some sort of blanket out here I could use…”

There was, in fact, no blanket in his car, and rather than risking freezing out there alone, he decided that incurring any sort of wrath by trying to go inside was, somehow, the best option there was. He got out of his car, feet once again freezing when they touched the snow, and as quickly as he could he ran to the side door on the cabin, banging his fist on it as forcefully as he could. “L-let me in!” he called out, not planning on stopping his knocking until he had some sort of response. “Please! It’s r-r-really cold out here and I don’t want to have come all this way just to freeze!”

When no one opened the door for him, he tried doing it himself, but it was predictably locked, despite the cabin being in the remote mountains buried in snow. “Guess they w-want me to freeze after all,” he said, hanging his head but noticing a box of what, in the pale light resulting from the moon reflecting on the snow, looked like tire chains sitting next to the door. “Oh, w-what’s this? Chains? Hm, maybe I c-could make use of those on my car, they should make d-driving so much easier. And it’ll pass the time, even if I’m fr-freezing out here putting them on.” He bent down to grab some of the chains out of the box, finding them icy to the touch and completely tangled. “What g-good do these do me like this? I can’t use them if I can’t untangle them, and frozen fingers aren’t good for untangling.”

He could have either tried getting into the cabin again, or he could have tried doing something with the tire chains, and he ultimately decided on the latter option. He picked the box up and carried it with him back to his car, putting it in the back seat and climbing in next to it. Thankfully the interior of the car was still relatively warm, making the work of untangling the chains a lot easier than it would have been had he chosen to stay outside. It also was aided by the fact that, even in the silence of the night, he had the tune to one of those catchy pop songs stuck in his head, allowing him to focus on continuing the song while he worked.

When he was done, he realized that there were more than the required chains for one vehicle in the box, a nice gesture in case anyone else was trying to leave, but he only needed the one set of them. “I’ll use them, then once I’m back home I’ll keep them safe until I can give them back to Vaike, or to Sully, whichever one of them I see with the truck first.”

A pounding on one of the car windows disrupted his thoughts, and he looked around for the source wildly. The driver’s door came flying open, a red head of hair poking its way in. “About time you made it up here, Stahl,” Sully said with a laugh, seemingly not bothered by the fact that it was before dawn and she’d been woken up by his arrival. “Here I was, thinking I’d have to send a damn rescue crew out to find you. What’re you doing with the truck’s chains?”

“I was going to use them on the car to make the return journey a lot safer, why? There’s enough for two vehicles to use them, if you want to put some on the truck for some reason.” He was watching as she climbed into the driver’s seat and closed the door, her sitting backwards in the chair to look at him in the back seat. Something about the expression she was wearing was giving him the impression that there was a lot more happening at the moment than he’d realized there was, but he wasn’t going to ask her about it.

Not when it looked like her newest plan was about to spill from her mouth anyway. “While we were waiting for you, we got on the topic of how this is all going to work, and surprise, surprise, now everyone wants to go down to Ylisstol.” Sully rolled her eyes at what she’d just said. “Well, the kids don’t, the older two want to stay here with the horses, but I’m not a babysitting service. I’m not watching them while Olivia rides down with you and the other ladies and their attached children.”

Stahl nodded along, not fully sure what it was she was talking about still. “So who am I taking with me? I came up here for Chrom’s sister, I thought she was the only person I had to take back.”

“Did you really think I was going to let her escape and not the others?” Laughing, Sully waggled a finger in the air at Stahl. “No way, when she goes, so does her best friend and those kids. But now I guess if she goes, so does Olivia and _her_ kids, which means, uh, we’re all going back down. You can take half, I can take the other half, and I still end up having to come back up here right away, which was what you coming up was supposed to be letting me avoid.”

“I think I’ve lost track of what’s happening,” Stahl admitted, earning himself a glare from Sully. “It’s been a long night, and I know it’s only just begun, but do you think you could maybe explain this to me in a different way?”

“It’s been a long night for all of us,” she corrected, opening the door and getting out of the car, just to open his door on him as well. “Now come on inside and we’ll straighten everything out and get ready to go, by the way she’s screaming I doubt things are going to get much better than they are right now.”

He swallowed down hard, a lump having formed in his throat. “Did you say screaming? What kind of mess am I involved in right now?” She didn’t answer him, only leading the way into the cabin where, true to her word, there was a fair amount of yells and screams, both by grown women and young children, taking place. There was a moment of hesitation where Stahl considered not going in and not playing savior to these people, but he chose to go with what he’d been asked and go inside anyway.

It might have seemed like a bad decision, just like accepting this task in the first place, but he had to put being an officer and a good person ahead of any personal thoughts. He was going to show the world that he was capable of doing great things with what talents he had, and stepping into a complete disaster zone was the only way to prove it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was so excited to write the second half of this chapter (the first part of what I have called Stahlquest since I came up with it) that I cranked out this ENTIRE chapter in 24 hours. :DD


	8. Guns Blazing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: gun use

As Stahl made his way inside the brightly-lit cabin, the screaming changed in intensity, several of the culprits noticing that someone new had joined them and, not knowing the newcomer, they started to screech like they were about to be killed. “Boys, I swear! If you two don’t silence yourselves right now, I am going to call your father and let him deal with this bad behavior!” Her voice sounding completely exhausted and done with everything that was happening, Maribelle wasn’t able to shut the two young boys up completely with her threat, but it did get them to stop screeching, at least.

“I take it that me getting here didn’t wake everyone up after all,” Stahl remarked, looking towards Sully while she was standing a few paces away from him, her eyes narrowed at the same children that had just been punished. She shook her head, and he gave a small sigh of relief. “Oh thank gods, I thought I was going to have to be responsible for causing this and I didn’t want to get yelled at like those kids just did.”

“Trust me, we’ve been up and waiting for you to get here. Thought I made that clear to you already.” Shaking her head again, Sully leaned her head back as she tried to compose her thoughts on how to handle the current situation, squeezing her eyes shut for several moments while the sounds of pained and panicked screaming not coming from a child filled the air. “Okay, you know what, I think I know what we’re going to do. If we get some lights, we can chain up the tires on both cars then get to driving here within the hour. It’ll be eight-ish hours down to town, even with stopping to de-chain, so that puts us getting there in the afternoon.” She snapped her fingers on one hand, trying to piece together everything. “What time is it that the guys in Plegia get back?”

Barely audible over the slowly-softening screams, Olivia replied, “Sometime this evening, unless they can manage to change their flight time once they know of all this happening. I don’t think they’ll need it, though…”

“I didn’t ask if they needed it or not, I just wanted to know if we’d be getting there before them or not.” Opening her eyes and leaning her head back down, so that she was making eye contact across the room with Olivia, Sully flashed a smile. “Then it’s settled. You ladies get everything together and everyone ready, me and Stahl’ll go chain the tires and we’ll be out of here before you know it.”

Without another word of her plan being said, she was already heading back towards the door, locking arms with Stahl as she passed him on her way. “I don’t understand, I thought you didn’t want to have to go,” he said, confused as to why he was being dragged outside. “I’m sure I can fit everyone in my car if you want me to take them, it’s no big deal.”

“Charming gesture, and I appreciate it, but I’ll handle taking the kids down if you’ll just focus on the ladies.” They were outside again, the cold growing a bit more bearable with every moment they were out there, and with retracing steps through the snow they weren’t even dealing with getting too snow-covered as they headed towards Stahl’s car. “I don’t honestly care, but I think the parents would rather their kids not be present for too much of this childbirth thing.”

“That’s probably right. I’ll get them down there safe and sound, no problems at all.” Stahl nodded at his own words, his assurance being reassuring to himself, before he moved on to the pressing questions he’d been silently dwelling on the entire time. “So how did this even happen, anyway? That’s Chrom’s sister in there having a baby, why’s she even here in the first place?”

Putting a finger in the air to silence Stahl, Sully’s eyes narrowed into an expression that meant business. “It’s just long enough of a story that I’ll tell you it while we work. Now, please tell me you know how to chain tires, because I don’t have a clue.” He told her that he did and she sighed in relief. “That’s great, now let’s get to it.”

While they were working on getting chains on the tires, Maribelle and Olivia had both expected to spend the time readying themselves and their children for the journey down the mountain, an agreement made by a silent exchange that involved a few hand gestures and a couple headshakes. But when Olivia had gone to start making sure her family’s things were in order, she was stopped by a wildly-grabbing hand reaching for hers and clinging onto it for dear life. “Please, don’t both of you leave me at once,” Lissa weakly said, her voice breathy. “I don’t want to be alone if it starts hurting again.”

“You’re just going through some weak contractions, you can handle them if you’re by yourself,” Olivia told her, before seeing the pleading look her sister-in-law was giving her. “But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you want someone by your side, no one should have to go through this alone…” She sighed, turning to her children where they were sitting on the floor, Inigo’s head resting on Lucina’s shoulder while they both tried to sleep. “I’m sure that the two of them haven’t spread their things too far around the camp, anyway. When we come back when the snow’s melted we can just get it then.”

“I didn’t bring anything of note up here aside from myself and my children,” Maribelle proudly said, before looking down at the clothing she’d been wearing since she arrived. “Perhaps that isn’t something I _should_ gloat about, but it at least keeps this moment from being so—oh!” A thought struck her faster than she anticipated, and she glanced to the door. “Olivia, do you think you can keep tabs on the boys while I run outside? There’s something I need to ask Sully for.”

With a sigh, Olivia nodded. “If they start screaming I will just let them scream, but yes, go on out and ask her whatever. We don’t need you to wait and cause us to spend more time up here waiting than we already have to.”

Maribelle was already to the door before Olivia had finished her statement, not wanting to waste a second of time. She was greeted by the frigid air outside, but simultaneously she was met with an uncovered car that she hadn’t expected to see. “There goes my need for asking anything!” she told herself, before opening up one of the back doors to get both car seats out from the back seat. “Can’t drive my boys down into town without these, but also…” She set those right inside the door to the cabin, going around to shut the back door she’d opened, just to open the passenger’s side door and get into the glove box, pulling out a neatly-wrapped present. “I would be stupid to leave this here, especially with the time to give it upon us.”

After making sure that she got anything else important out of the car, Maribelle went back into the house without even trying to contact either of the people outside. “Ma, Ma, it’s so loud in here!” she heard Brady calling at her when she was back inside, and when she looked to him to see his little hands covering his ears, his brother mimicking his actions, she felt her heart pang with sympathy for the boys. It was her fault that they were having to endure this, Lissa actively screaming in pain once more.

“I understand, my sweet, but soon you’ll be where it’s not so loud and it’ll all be better.” Putting a smile on her lips to make her boys feel better, she made sure to ruffle the hair on both of their heads before she approached Lissa, that wrapped present tucked underneath one arm. “How are you holding up, dearest? It surely can’t be that bad right now.”

“It feels like I’m about to be ripped in half at any moment,” Lissa answered, loosening her grip on Olivia’s arm as her latest wave of pain finally subsided. “How do people survive this when it gets worse? I don’t think I can survive it like this.”

Olivia opened her mouth to give an explanation, one that most likely involved the use of medication and whatnot, but Maribelle was the one who got to speak. “I know that when I first went into labor with Brady, I refused any kind of assistance, but the pain got to be too much to bear, but I still refused it until Frederick went out and bought me a gift, then forced me to accept medication if I wanted the gift.” She happily sighed, thinking about that moment, before shaking her head to bring herself back to the situation. “What I have for you isn’t as flashy as that purse I got that day was, nor is it a bribe to get you to do something we cannot have you do right now, but it’s a little gift from me to you.”

She tossed the small box at Lissa, who didn’t bother trying to catch it, letting it hit her in the shoulder instead. It fell to the ground next to her, so Olivia picked it up and handed it to her. “Thanks, I guess? You didn’t need to get me anything,” she said, starting to pick at the wrapping paper. “You taking me to Ylisstol should have been enough of a present.”

“Well we saw how good at that I ended up being.” Maribelle laughed. “This was going to be kept from you until you were a bit closer to birth time, but I think giving it as an apology gift as opposed to a push present works.”

“A…what?” The question was two-pronged, as Lissa was indeed asking for clarification on whatever it was Maribelle had just said, but at the same time, she had gotten the wrapping paper off and was holding a small jewelry box in her hand. When she flipped the lid off of it, Maribelle hovering beside her to see the reaction, she could have sworn her heart skipped a beat at the shock of what she was holding, and she slammed it closed. “Is this some kind of joke, Maribelle? Are you trying to freak me out right now?”

“I wasn’t aware you’d seen that before,” Maribelle calmly said, not fazed by her friend’s freak out. “I just thought it would be a nice gesture to give it to you, so that you could…” She closed her eyes and laughed. “It’s honestly a crazy thought I’ve had that led me to this decision, words I’ve been hanging on to for years now that have pressured me into giving you this ring that, one time, should have belonged to you.”

“I hadn’t seen it before, exactly, but I _had_ picked out one similar to it once upon a time!” Lissa shoved the box back towards Maribelle, who cracked her eyes open just enough to push it right back at her friend. “I don’t want this, or need it, or anything! This is a stupid present! Take it back!”

Maribelle shook her head, her pushing the box back just as insistent as Lissa’s trying to push it away. “I was given it because I was the only one there willing to take it off his hands, and now I want you to decide what to do with it.” She laughed once more, Lissa catching on that there was no use in trying to get rid of it. “Perhaps you’ll find someone else deserving of it one of these days, but for now, it belongs in your care as a gift from your best friend.”

“A gift I didn’t even ask for!” Lissa opened the box again, showing off the jewel-covered ring within it. “I mean, that I didn’t ask for this time! I turned down getting it the first time, what makes you think I’ll want it now?”

“Lissa, it would be best if you just accepted the gift as it is and stopped arguing it,” Olivia interjected, closing the ring box so that no one could see it. “Maribelle must have some reason for handing it off to you today, and she’ll probably properly explain it at some point, if not right now.”

“I’ve already more than explained it. I was given the ring for safekeeping but now I believe that its place isn’t with me, and I am merely doing what I had been asked to do with it and pass it along to someone who might be more deserving of it.” Smiling, Maribelle looked at Lissa, who puckered her face as she looked back at her. “I’m just saying, you might know a better place for it than I do.”

“It’s called the trash,” Lissa flatly replied, relaxing her face for just a moment before she was wincing in pain again. “Oh gods, all you’ve done is make that pain-free time go by faster than it should’ve. Why’d you do that to me, Maribelle? I thought we were friends!”

Rolling her eyes, Maribelle turned on her toes and shrugged as she walked away. “I thought we were too, but then you insulted my thoughtful gift. I’ll leave you be in your horrible throes of childbirth now, possibly to check to see when we will be leaving, possibly to just get away from you.”

“Now that’s not fair, Maribelle. You know that she’s merely thinking irrationally,” Olivia called after her, her words falling on ears actively ignoring her. She clicked her tongue before offering her hand to Lissa to hold. “Don’t worry, I will be here for you no matter what, for as long as it takes for us to get to Ylisstol and for your husband to get to your side.”

From where she was standing in the doorway to the snowy outdoors, Maribelle was able to hear Lissa give some sort of “at least there’s that” response before screaming began overtaking the cabin. “I can understand why she wouldn’t want the ring, seeing as it was meant to be an engagement ring for her, but I don’t understand why she wouldn’t want to eventually make things right.” She was watching outside towards the truck, where Sully and Stahl, phone flashlights illuminating what the pre-dawn sky couldn’t, were hard at work chaining up the tires, them already having securely put them on one vehicle. “I said it then that I’d be the one to give the ring back when the time came for it to be of use but…I don’t think that ring’s going to be used like that after all.”

“What’re you doing in the doorway?” Sully barked from where she was at the front of the truck, happening to see Maribelle when inspecting the work she’d done. She expected to get no response, so when the blond ducked inside and grabbed the car seats she’d taken out of her own car, bringing them outside with her, she was pleasantly surprised. “Ah, you wanna go ahead and put those in? I don’t know the first thing about driving little kids around, and since I’ll be doing it, you might want to make sure they’re put in right.”

“I’d love to,” she said in response, casting a glance towards the still-opened door to the cabin before noticing that Sully had gone ahead and opened one of the back doors to the truck for her. She made quick work of getting the seats properly in place, feeling relatively upset about how her babies would be riding down out of the mountains with someone who wasn’t her. The one comforting thought she did have was about how the person they were riding down with was going to have other kids there with her, and that meant that if her boys needed something they wouldn’t have to ask the driver for help. Oh, and the thought about how she wasn’t going to be forcing her sons to endure another minute of those screams that they didn’t need to be hearing.

After the chains were all put on and everything not being left at the camp was packed up in either vehicle, the three ladies riding down in Stahl’s car got in, with him not exactly enthusiastic about having to be the one driving them out of the mountains. “I know why I have to do it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s going to be a big distractions hearing her screaming in pain so often,” he admitted, kicking at some snow while hoping that his words would get Sully to change her mind on how things were going to happen. Her response was to go inside and check on the horses one last time, leaving him to sigh and take his place at the helm of his vehicle. Driving out of the valley went a lot better than getting in had, and he was confident that as long as he didn’t let the yelling get to him, they’d make it down just fine.

“Do you think they’ll be leaving soon?” Olivia asked, looking through the back windshield to see the fading cabin and other vehicles left in front of it. “I don’t doubt Sully and her decisions, but I can’t help but worry that she’ll not leave to spite certain others.”

While Maribelle, sitting in the passenger’s seat, felt a shiver down her spine as she knew that comment was pointed at her, Stahl shrugged it off. “Can’t say it’ll be soon, she did tell me she wanted to make sure the horses would be fine while she’s gone, but they’ll get to town today too, no worries.” His hand reached for the radio but he stopped himself, remembering that he hadn’t been able to find any stations on his way up. “Sorry that I don’t have any music for us to concentrate on for the ride. It’ll be a while before we can get any, but that’s okay!”  
“Don’t worry, we don’t need any,” Maribelle said, reaching for her phone. “I can always supply some if the need arises, though. The wonders of having music at your fingertips for when you’re hard at work.”

“Oh, cool! Do you think you’ve…hm, I don’t know what it’s called, but I definitely remember some of the words!” Thinking back to the song he’d had stuck in his head on the trip up into the mountains, Stahl started quoting what lyrics he did remember, and when he was done with his small snippet he could see three faces ranging between disgusted and unamused looking at him in the mirror. “I’m taking it you don’t know what song that was?”

Simultaneously the women gave him their answers: a disapproving headshake from Maribelle, a whispered statement about not wanting anything to go “boom” from Olivia, and a wide-eyed whine from Lissa about how she didn’t want to hear anything involving the word “baby” right then. “Okay, guess maybe you don’t know the song,” he said with a laugh, focusing on the task at hand. “Maybe when we get good stations on the radio in a few hours I’ll be able to teach you it.” He was taking the situation in stride, and while he knew the drive wasn’t going to be fun, he was going to try his best to make it bearable in whatever ways he could.

The people riding down in the truck, on the other hand, weren’t going to have as much of an opportunity to have fun. The four kids were already in their seats, Lucina in the front and Inigo squeezed in between the two car seats in the back, and they were all awaiting Sully to get done with feeding the horses so they could go. “With how much these boys aren’t crying, you’d think they like not being with their mom,” Inigo remarked as he looked at the two brothers flanking him, both of whom had already fallen asleep in their seats. “Which I can understand, she’s a real pain.”

“Even if she’s not here, it’s not nice to talk bad about her,” Lucina said in reply, turning in her seat to look at her brother. “Besides, if it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t have gotten to do the thing we did.”

“I know, I know, but still, Lucy! She’s not a very good person and I don’t get what Aunt Lissa sees in her.” Crossing his arms over his chest indignantly, Inigo gave a huffy sigh. “I sure hope that she ends up okay. Aunt Lissa, I mean, not the other person we were talking about.”

Lucina smiled, watching her brother’s display of obnoxiousness. “She’ll be okay, she’s just having a baby. I can’t wait until we get to meet our baby cousin O’wain, can you?”

“I doubt we’ll get to meet him anytime soon.” As quickly as he’d crossed his arms, Inigo was already uncrossing them as he looked at his sister. “He’ll get born and then they’ll forget to show us him and then next thing you know, we’ll have to go somewhere far away to visit him. I don’t want that.”

“I don’t either, so let’s hope that they do remember to show him to us!” Balling her hands into fists, which she brought up to her jawline, Lucina squealed. “I’m really hoping that he’s more like his dad than his mom, I don’t know if the world needs someone else like Aunt Lissa, and, you know, from what I’ve seen Uncle Lon’qu isn’t that bad of a guy.” Squealing again, she had to right herself in her seat to compose herself, and once she felt she had a better control over her current emotions she was turned back around. “So anyway, Inigo, moving on from babies and all that, what do you think that message we sent did?”

Smiling at his sister’s change of topic, the boy made a move to give a big, dramatic shrug but he nearly hit both of the sleeping children next to him in the process. “I wish I knew,” he answered, “but I know if some pretty lady sent me a message like that, I would want to reply to her and get talking. Do you think we did the right thing, sending that?”

“She wasn’t going to send it herself, so yeah.” Laughing, Lucina continued, “If Mother thinks that someone should get with someone else, then you know it’s got to be good. Besides, we both know that Father likes seeing his officers happy, and if this works, two of them will be happy with each other!”

Inigo saw something outside of the truck that he should have made note of, but he ignored it for the sake of not ruining the conversation they were having. “Yeah, and maybe he’ll stop inviting mister Vaike over for dinner so often. I mean, he’s nice, but he’s not family.”

“Oh, but…” Uncurling her hands, Lucina was now cupping her face as she spoke. “If they do get together, maybe Father can invite them both! It’ll be nice, us being the reason they’re together and all that! Gods I really hope that message was—“ She shut up incredibly quickly when the door to the truck opened and Sully jumped in, turning the truck on faster than Lucina could turn around in her seat.

“What were you kids in here talking about?” the woman asked, knowing entirely well that they had been talking about something. “Figured you’d have gone the hell to sleep, having it be so quiet in here. So what’s the hot gossip you’re sharing? Talking about how much you’re going to miss this place?”

“You could say that,” Lucina replied, the lie slipping from between her lips with ease. “We sure did have a lot of fun up here before people showed up and ruined everything. Although they did teach us some valuable lessons, like not sticking hands in horse’s mouths, and to follow each and every warning you hear about the weather.”

“Lucy, what are you saying?” Perhaps it was his young age not having given him the opportunities in life to know when someone was purposely lying, or maybe it was the fact that he really wanted to get results from what he’d done, but Inigo was not going to let his sister brush away their plan. “We weren’t talking about missing this place at all!”

Not helping things even slightly was the lack of sleep both kids were currently running on, so when Lucina matter-of-factly said, “I know, but we’re not supposed to _tell_ her about what we did with her phone,” it took a solid thirty seconds for the girl to register that she had accidentally started spilling the beans on what they’d done. “I mean, we didn’t do anything with it, no way ma’am.”

“My phone? Do I need to stop this truck right now and go through the browsing history on there after all?” Both kids said that wasn’t necessary, not wanting to stop when they’d just started leaving the camp. “Then tell me what you did. I promise I won’t give a damn if it’s nothing illegal.”

Lucina tried turning in her seat to see what her brother was doing in response to that, but before she got the chance he was coming clean about things. “We might have sent a message to someone about how much you love them,” Inigo told her, taking the promise literally. “Because Mother said it’s true and you needed to get around to telling him someday.”

“And,” the girl added, seeing for herself that Sully was taken aback at the honesty, even if her eyes seemed to be twitching at the action, “we did it in the nicest and simplest way possible, so if he reacts wrong you can play it off like friendship love. A good, easy ‘I love you’ message isn’t that bad, right?”

After grimacing at what she heard, the reality of what that meant hitting her hard, Sully gave a long sigh and relaxed in her seat. “Well, it could’ve been worse. Could’ve been something flowery and unlike me. Can’t say I enjoy this, and I can’t say that I won’t be telling your parents about what you’ve done—“ the two kids gasped at that, begging for forgiveness rather than an avenue for punishment, “—hey now, never said I’d tell them like it was a bad thing. I’ll roll with the punches on this one. Didn’t know it’d take you two getting the word to him, but…if he responds well, we’ll see what happens.”

As if a positive response was possible though, and Sully knew not to get her hopes up too high about one, even if she wanted to.

* * *

For four days, the officers had been at the mercy of the event planners of the conference, being pushed to different seminars and activity sessions there at the hotel and convention center, but on that last morning, there was nothing more for them to do than to go to the closing ceremony and then head home. The rooms were packed up and ready to be left from, the last hotel breakfast was had, and aside from the nagging worry that something bad was happening to the ladies at the horse camp, there was nothing to be focusing on.

“Despite not knowing where in the world my sister is right now,” Chrom said, pulling his two officer companions into a group hug, “I’d like to think that this conference didn’t go too badly for us at all.”

“Speak for yourself on that one,” Frederick quickly rebutted, pulling out of the hug and adjusting his shirt to reduce wrinkles in it. “I could have gone without the constant dread and fear that Maribelle and her wayward actions had caused. I’m sure that others would agree with me especially Lon’qu. Can you imagine what he is going through right now?”

“I’d rather not imagine it.” Also ducking out of the hug, Vaike rolled his eyes at the sentimental behavior his chief was trying to get him to partake in. “Listen, ol’ Vaike’s had a wonderful time bein’ stuck here dealin’ with all your problems and whatnot, but I can’t wait t’be done with this and t’go back to my real life and my actual job and actin’ like nothin’ that’s happened here ever actually happened t’me.”

That was a point that earned him a couple of raised eyebrows, but neither other man questioned what he was saying. Chrom, however, wasn’t going to let Vaike’s downer statement be the end of the conversation. “You’re right, I don’t know why I thought I could get away with calling this conference a decent time without remembering that the only positive note you’ve had all week is that text message you keep looking at.”

“Yeah, that’s—er, ya noticed that I keep lookin’ at it?” Shuffling where he stood, Vaike reached for his phone in his pocket but stopped himself, not wanting to bring attention to something he’d just been called out on.

“Ever since you got it, you’ve been glued to it. Not to mention how you fell asleep last night talking to yourself about it,” Chrom said with a laugh. “Trust me, it was quite the adventure hearing you talk about how much you don’t know how to respond to it because you don’t want to scare a woman off.”

“I didn’t…gods, was I talkin’ t’myself before bed last night?” Shaking his head at his own stupidity that he’d already mentally pushed away, Vaike went ahead with getting his phone out and opened it up to that message, reading its short contents and feeling his whole body warm up at the sight. “I can’t help it, ‘specially since it means a whole lot t’see this comin’ from her of all people.”

“Listening to you babble like a lovesick puppy would be more fun if we didn’t have somewhere to be right now,” Frederick reminded them, taking a couple steps towards the door. “We’ve already been enough of disruption to this conference several times, we don’t need to walk in on the last event later than everyone else.”

Chrom knew that his friend was right, but he still didn’t want what they were talking about to end on a down note. “Yes, well, neither of us were the ones constantly leaving seminars abruptly because he couldn’t manage to keep his phone on silent.” He could hear Frederick struggling to come up with some response to that, knowing entirely well that it was his fault and his alone that his phone kept going off while busy. “I know that hearing from your wife was important, but I highly doubt that Lon’qu had his phone audible to everyone when it rang, and I know I didn’t.”

“Sir, you know that—“

“How many times do I need to remind you that there’s no need for you to be so formal with me?” That was a fitting end to their time spent in the room, he decided, and so he led his men out, going straight for the stairs and meeting the Feroxi delegation down at the entrance into the lobby. Chrom greeted them with a friendly nod, Basilio and Flavia both ushering him into conversation while they walked towards the main convention hall, where every officer and official that had come to the conference was beginning to take their seats to hear the Plegian leaders give some parting words.

The first thing they noticed after taking their seats was the presence of the leader of Plegia itself, a dark and spindly man that seemed to be scanning the crowd of officers. “He’s most likely looking for a certain missing member of your group,” Flavia said, laughing as she put a hand on Chrom’s shoulder. “Bet no one’s broken the bad news to him yet, and he was looking for a good old family reunion.”

“Of all the times Robin’s told me about his father, it’s never clicked that he’s _the_ Validar, not just some other guy with the same name.” Chrom, watching the man look around, shook his head and groaned. “Great, just great. That’s one Plegian leader and one Plegian police chief with ties to my force, and I can’t do anything about either of those things.” His attention had shifted from where Validar was standing to a man seated behind him, legs crossed in front of him as he seemed to be laughing with a woman next to him. Eyes narrowing as he watched them converse, he grumbled, “Still can’t believe he can cause a woman to jump off a cliff and not lose his job over it. What a world we live in.”

Frederick and Vaike were both looking up at the man that Chrom was referring to, but when their commander tried to laugh off what he’d just said with some cheesy joke, they exchanged a glance between them. “You think that Chrom’s just tryin’ t’keep us from gettin' upset for him or somethin’?” Vaike asked, to which Frederick shook his head. “Eh, you’re probably right on that one. If we were gonna get upset, it’d happen no matter what.”

“I think he’s more trying not to dwell on anything bad. There’s enough wrong in what we have to face once we’ve left this place, perhaps he just does not want to cause any more problems here before we go.” Frederick’s words were sagely stated, which made Vaike feel confident in what he was being told. “Besides, it’s been enough years that the only people who should be upset when thinking about Emmeryn’s death are her direct relatives.”

“Or people with half a brain who know that how she died was completely messed up, but I get’cha, don’t worry.” Winking, Vaike shot a finger gun at Frederick, who softly chuckled at the behavior. “Hey now, the Vaike’s just tryin’ t’make light in the last couple ‘a hours we’ve gotta spend here in Plegia. It’s about time we get goin’ home, really.”

On the other side of the three chiefs was Lon’qu, merely listening in on what his commanders were saying to his brother-in-law. His face was buried in his hands as he thought about the million things that could be going wrong at that very moment regarding his wife, not wanting anything to do with the social aspect of the event because of it. Even when Basilio made comments directly involving him, he remained silent and lost in his thoughts, which led to a bit of awkward laughter and a few statements of how this wasn’t typical Lon’qu behavior. “Never seen the guy get like this, even after the times he’d been one-upped by women,” Basilio admitted, scratching at the back of his bald head. “What’s going on has really hit him deep.”

“It’s hit all of us a lot deeper than we’d expected it to, given the plans we all made and whatnot.” Chrom shrugged, looking past the two Feroxis to where Lon’qu was sitting. “I think once we’re in Ylisstol and he can see my sister again, everything will be just fine.”

In order for that to happen, all that stood between them was the ceremony they were waiting to have start and the flight home, plus the ladies making it to Ylisstol in some manner. Although no one had been directly told what was going on about that, thanks to a couple of messages exchanged between a chief and his stand-in back home they knew that some kind of plan had been made to get the ladies home, but how well it would work wouldn’t be known right away due to several surrounding circumstances. The idea of the ladies making it back that day, at around the same time the guys landed, was enough to get those most heavily affected by their decisions through the ceremony.

And what a ceremony it was! It was almost as if the Plegians hadn’t had enough fun bragging about their country and how great they thought they were at every chance they’d had before. Every person with some kind of authority or power had a role in speaking, dragging the ceremony on longer than it really needed to be, and it ended with nearly an hour of Validar talking about how much he appreciated that officers came from the world over to spend a week in his country, and he hoped that they would all come back soon. With those parting words, the ceremony was dismissed and the conference officially over, and rather than fighting with the crowd to leave the Ylissean group and the Feroxi group stayed put, not leaving until a fair number of other people had.

As a group, they made it to the staircase’s entrance, when Basilio and Flavia both made motions to go a different way upstairs. “Elevator’s probably crowded, but there’s some other folks I’d like to see before we go,” Flavia said, quickly hugging Chrom and Lon’qu both. “Have fun and be safe getting home, we’ll be thinking of you the whole time.”

“Make sure to stop by next time you’re in the neighborhood,” Basilio told Chrom, before he turned to Lon’qu and gave a curt nod. “And you, I’ll see you back at the station whenever you feel it’s time to come home. Don’t be a stranger, and don’t let this be goodbye.”

“You got it, sir,” Lon’qu replied, returning the nod. When the two disappeared into the fray, he sighed, looking at Chrom and ignoring if anyone else was looking at him. “My things are in my room, but getting your things first is of a higher priority. I can always run to my room to get them before we leave.” He opened the door to the stairwell and let the others in, finding the stairs oddly empty, although the sound of footsteps running down them was a new sound.

Halfway between the floors they found someone descending the stairs looking for something, a satchel on her back. When she saw Lon’qu among the group coming up, she visibly paled, eyes going wide. “Lon’qu, my acquaintance, do yourself a favor and turn around right now. Upstairs…they’re terrorizing. It was a ruse. An attempt at a distraction. The walls’ ears heard more than you’d be inclined to believe.”

“Say’ri, you’re sounding like you’ve been tricked into sharing conspiracy theories,” Lon’qu said to her, stepping up another step closer to her and watching as she flinched, shaking her head rapidly. “Calm down, there is no reason for you to be acting like this. Do you need a companion right now?”

“Aye, I would say I do, but…” Her gaze flickered towards the upper part of the stairs. “It’s unsafe for you to come any closer. They…if they see you, it’s over.”

“Who is this?” Chrom asked, looking to Say’ri with suspicion in his eyes. Even after Lon’qu told him that she was one of the two officers from Chon’sin at the convention, and that she was completely fine as a person, he had his doubts. “Why would she be coming down the stairs waiting to lure someone into some kind of trap if she’s fine? I think we should just keep going upstairs, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“N-no, please!” On the verge of tears, Say’ri held a hand out in front of her, but a single hand gesture wasn’t going to convince Chrom of any kind of innocence or instill any beliefs. As he led his men closer to her, the door to the entrance to the stairwell on the next floor opened up and heavier footsteps started descending. “No, oh no, I had a hunch you’d come this way and I didn’t want it to end like this.”

“End like what?” Turning his head slightly as he leaned towards Say’ri in his suspicion, Chrom saw the shadow of a man go behind the woman, a pistol in his hands. “Okay, what’s with th—“ He was cut off by a groan given by Say’ri when the back of the gun was whacked against her head, the wielder looking from his victim to the four men on the stairs with no remorse in his eyes. “—at’s a weapon. And you’re going to use it on us. It _was_ a trap!”

“Hold your damn tongue,” Lon’qu barked, grabbing onto Chrom and pulling him back a small bit. “That right there is Yen’fay. He just happens to be the brother of the woman he just knocked out, the one you chose to ignore over anything reasonable.” After straightening himself up a small amount, Lon’qu properly bowed in the presence of the man hovering before them. “Whatever it is we did, we didn’t intend for it to get like this,” he said, standing back up and noticing that the cold, dead look in Yen’fay’s eyes hadn’t changed. “Let us pass through on the stairs and we will leave you and your sister be.”

He very slowly shook his head, turning how he was holding his gun so that it was facing the four officers. Without a word, he closed one eye and began moving his weapon to point it at each one of them, not shooting but not picking a target either. “Er, you still going to try telling me this wasn’t a trap?” Chrom said in a whisper through the side of his mouth, hoping that Lon’qu could hear him.

He did indeed hear the words, and he could feel his stomach sinking as they lingered in his ears. “I don’t understand, Chrom. Yen’fay and Say’ri were nothing but polite when I spoke with them earlier in the week. I can’t begin to bring myself to think about how it led to this.”

“You know what, I’m at a loss for how this became an issue as well.” Even though he was bringing up the rear of the group, Frederick had been able to hear what Lon’qu had said and was remarking on it for himself. “That day in the Rosanne delegation’s room, these two seemed to be decent folks and skilled officers. Does this mean that everyone that was there, minus ourselves, was conspiring against us? Or is there some other kind of foul play happening here?”

Lon’qu was beginning to close his eyes, not wanting to face what was happening head-on. He reached for where his gun would normally be held, finding nothing in its place, and he sighed. “I spoke with the woman from Rosanne yesterday morning, she seems as innocent as the rest of us. I apologize that my trusting people of a certain background led to this, but…” Sighing again, he lifted a hand towards Yen’fay and beckoned for him to make a move. “If anyone here deserves to be shot, it would be—“

“Not so fast!” His legs were trembling beneath him, and his words were rushing out before he’d even thought them through, but Vaike had a feeling he knew what Lon’qu had been just about to say, and he wasn’t going to let that happen. “If anyone here’s gettin' shot, it’s gonna be me, okay? Been nothin’ but trouble for the rest of ya, now I’ll take the bullet for ya if it means ya get back t’Ylisse safe and sound.” He climbed the stairs to stand in front of Lon’qu, who was staring at him with a slightly agape mouth as his hand was pushed down out of the air. “What’re ya waitin’ for? Dude’s got a loaded gun, d’ya really wanna be standin’ around when he fires?”

“No, we don’t, but…what are you _doing_?” His head turning to look back at who had just spoken, Chrom could only give his friend a quick side-eyed look before he was facing Yen’fay and the gun once more. “You’ve got no reason to jump in and play the hero role right now!”

“All three ‘a ya, you’ve got someone t’get home for. Me, I ain’t got anyone like that who’d really miss me…” Vaike inhaled deeply, shaking off any doubts about what decision he’d just made. “And if I did have someone, she’d understand that if I get gunned down right here, it was for doin’ the honorable thing and gettin' ya home without a scratch.”

“Aw, what a cute sacrifice!” a male voice called out from the upper part of the stairs. “Did you hear that, he’s going to take the shot! Gonna get filled with ammo, like a true good guy! And all for the people with the kids and the babies!”

“You’re kidding…” Now glancing up to where the voice came from, Chrom gave an awkward and breathy laugh before calling, “Henry, please for the love of Naga say you’re not with this guy!”

Judging by the gunfire that echoed down the stairs, bullets lodging into the wall behind Yen’fay and therefore distracting him from them, it seemed that the answer Chrom was looking for was a definite no. “How would we be able to live with ourselves working for the enemy?” Tharja’s sultry voice replied, before more shots rang out in the corridor. “We already abandoned post working for Validar as his lackeys, now it seems Gangrel’s just as bad of news as Validar ever could’ve been. Why can’t us poor Plegian officers catch a break?”

“Well it’s good to have you on our side of things,” Chrom said, relaxing a small bit at how there wasn’t a loaded gun being pointed at himself or his men any longer. “Thanks for being here to take care of things.”

“That’s our job, to pay you back for how you’ve helped us in the past!” Henry giggled at his own words, behavior unfitting for the current situation. “Now get on out of here, we’ll take it from here, easy peasy.”

“I’m not leaving this stairwell without making sure Say’ri is fine,” Lon’qu quietly said, pushing Vaike out of his way in his attempt to get up the stairs. Not liking the rude contact, Vaike went right ahead and grabbed Lon’qu for himself, pulling him back to where he’d originally been. “Get your hands off of me, you waste of life! She isn’t an enemy and I want to make sure she wasn’t injured by being hit with the blunt side of a gun!”

“A guy jumps in front ‘a ya, sayin’ he’ll take a bullet for ya, and the only way you refer to him is by callin’ him a waste of life? What kind ‘a guy are you?” Not letting go despite Lon’qu trying to break away, Vaike was quite displeased with what had been said to him given the circumstances. “Listen, I know we haven’t ever gotten along, and it’s always been fightin’ and jealousy between us, but this could’ve changed it all and you chose to keep on bein’ an asshole t’me.”

“So maybe my choice of words was brash, but the point remains that you are a pain in my side that’s holding me back, quite literally this time.” Lon’qu attempted stepping forward again but found that Vaike was holding on even harder now. “Let go of me so I can check on my friend, please.”

“Not ‘til you apologize for what ya just said ‘bout the Vaike.” He wasn’t expecting an actual apology, just a muttered comment that would have to do, so when Lon’qu turned to him, looked him straight in the eyes, and said sorry for calling him a waste of life, he was quite surprised and would have made a snarky remark about it, if another barrage of gunfire didn’t ring through the air. The two men broke their stare at each other to look instead at Yen’fay, with the end of his gun slightly smoking.

Chrom was bringing a hand to his mouth, leaning back from where the man was standing. “I sure do hope whoever he just shot at is okay…” he said, stepping down a stair and motioning for the others to do the same. Despite his want to check on Say’ri, Lon’qu heeded Chrom’s words and started heading down the stairs, Vaike letting go of him to do so. When they were back at the bottom, the four men hid around the corner, not wanting to leave the stairwell in case of more fire.

“I am okay, in case anyone was worrying!” It was another answer that Chrom had been looking for, given to him courtesy of a shaky-sounding Henry. “Yay playing the role of meat shield for someone!”

“I could have protected myself,” Tharja said in return, the sound of her coming down the stairs echoing just like the shots had beforehand, and just like the following shots that caused Yen’fay to drop his weapon due to being shot in both arms did. She poked her head around the bend in the staircase, trying to see where the group of men had gone, but shrugged when she didn’t see them around their corner. “And you four, wherever you are, let this be the end of us owing you for your kindness that Christmas. We’re on equal footing now.”

The general consensus between the men was that yes, they were indeed, but before anyone could tell her that the door from the lobby opened up, Basilio, Flavia, Virion, and Cherche all coming in with varying levels of intense worry on their faces. “We headed here as soon as we heard that there might have been some kind of attack planned, but we were accosted by a pair of Plegian scum who thought they could try roughing us up,” Flavia explained, rubbing at a long scratch-mark on her arm. “If it wasn’t for these Rosanne folks who’d been keeping tabs on the conspiracies, we might never have known.”

“It was quite easy gathering the information from them,” Cherche said with her fake smile, one that was unnerving to the men who’d just been staring death in the face. “If you refuse to leave a place that they want to sit, eventually they begin to act like you are not there and start planning out their schemes with you listening to their every word. I tried to spread the news of this once I knew it, but I was far too late to get it to everyone.”

“Nonsense, you got it to enough people to let them know what was happening to avoid any pointless deaths.” Grinning, Virion took one of Cherche’s hands in his own and squeezed it. “You did a lovely job, my dearest assistant.” He was clearly unaware of the gunshot wounds sustained by two people in the stairwell as he spoke, but no one who did know of them was going to correct him on the matter. Some things were better left unsaid.

Other things, however, were going to be said no matter what. “I must say, it was nice to stare Gangrel down and tell him to where to kiss me when I was done with him,” Basilio said, giving a nod towards Chrom. “Hit him right where it hurts, brought him to his knees begging for mercy while Flavia took care of his lady friend. Both of them were kissin’ ass when we were out of there, and we weren’t giving them a second of the time. What the hell do the Plegians think we are, weak?”

“Plegians actually saved our lives in here,” Chrom replied, appreciating that Basilio was telling him about making Gangrel pay but not enjoying the talking down of an entire group when there were, shockingly, some decent people among them. “I’m inclined to believe that certain people pass into your life for a reason, and the reason those two Plegian officers were in my life were for today and today only.”

In the flurry of responses coming from that comment, no one paid attention to how Frederick looked up at the stairs where Henry might still have been dealing with having been shot and gave a soft laugh, smiling as he did. “Maybe you weren’t so bad after all…”

The entire group found a different way to get up to the next floor, taking a different set of stairs that put them at the other end of the hallway but in no line of danger, and after parting ways with the people not bound for Ylisse as they passed by rooms, the remaining four ended up coming up on the room that the Ylissean officers had called theirs for the past few days just to see Tharja leaning against the door inspecting her fingernails, Henry half-visible in the doorway for the other stairwell. “You took longer to get up here than I thought you would,” she said, looking from her nails to the men approaching her. “Thought you’d rush right on up to greet your saviors.”

“Er, we were unaware you would be here, actually.” Reaching for the door with his key in hand, Chrom expected her to step aside so they could get in and get their things (Lon’qu had already gotten to grab his stuff when they’d passed his room), but she stood firmly in place, looking at him with a smirk. “Okay, what gives? You said we were even now, from us giving you a place to stay that Christmas to you saving our lives. What do you want me to say to you right now?”

“I don’t want _you_ to say anything to me,” she snappishly replied, before looking at Lon’qu with a smile. “If Henry were over here, he’d tell you to kiss your baby for him when you get to meet him. But he’s not here so…kiss that baby for him.” She smiled, leaving Lon’qu a bit unsure of how to reply to that because it wasn’t her message she was passing along, and then her attention was on Frederick. “Same for you, kiss those babies of yours for Henry. He’d appreciate it.”

“He took bullets for us when no one else would have. I think kissing them’s the least I could do for him.” With a nod, Frederick managed to ignore the almost dumbstruck look on Vaike’s face from the first part of his statement, choosing to just watch Tharja as she pushed herself off of the door to let them all in. “Please, let us know about his recovery and whatnot, we’ll be thinking of him.”

“No you won’t be, but whatever.” Shrugging, Tharja walked off to go be with her partner, leaving the four men standing there by the door slightly confused and all the more ready to get out of Plegia and back where they needed to be. Chrom unlocked and opened the door, letting them in long enough to grab their things and step back out, choosing to take the elevator downstairs rather than wade through the warzone that stairwell had become, and once they were to the lobby it was a matter of hailing the shuttle to the airport and preparing themselves for the ride home.

They were greeted at the airport by news reporters trying to make sense of the shooting that had been rumored to have happened at the hotel, but none of the men felt like indulging their gossip-mongering minds, and so they pushed through the crowd and got into the secure area of the airport as fast as they could. Once they were where no one could bother them, they relaxed, waiting for the inevitable boarding call for the once-daily flight into Ylisstol they were going to be on. While three of the men were busy with trying to let their wives know that they were going to be on their way soon, and finding it impossible to get any of their phones to pick up, Vaike isolated himself a few rows of seats away from them, rolling his phone around in his hands.

“Can’t believe I actually offered t’die for someone who stole my girlfriend from me,” he muttered to himself, glancing up and over at where Lon’qu seemed to be in the middle of leaving an impassioned voicemail for Lissa to hear when she got the chance. “Can believe he still hates me even after doin’ that, but still, what even was that? Why would anyone, especially ol’ Vaike, offer that for anyone?”

His eyes tracked back down to his phone, which he turned on and opened up to the message he’d received the day before. “Maybe’s that’s just a bit ‘a Sully shinin’ through in me. She’d risk her life for some damn horses, why wouldn’t I risk mine for guys I’ve been stayin’ with?” Letting his screen dim, he sighed and leaned back in his seat, kicking his feet up into the seats across from him. “But that can’t be right, offerin’ t’die for them isn’t like savin’ horses like she does. Horses at least like her.”

In his new sitting position he felt more like dozing off than sitting awake to wait for the call to get on the plane, so he closed his eyes and tried to take at least a little bit of a nap before the flight. What he got was the mental image of the horse camp up in Ferox, the homeliness of the place and its rustic charm, and just himself and Sully, sitting in there in silence. From there the memories flickered on, all the time he’d spent with her since then flying by in a matter of moments. There were long shifts at work, a couple of social functions, even the time he’d ended up crashing at her place because he’d lost his keys and didn’t want to have to find them in the middle of the night. Every memory he had with her, one by one, hit him instead of sleep, and he snapped out of the trance it put him in by opening up to that message once more.

Three tiny little words were the contents of what she’d last sent him, three words that he hadn’t heard or said since before his last relationship had fallen to pieces. Looking at them coming from such a strong and powerful woman made him feel like he might just have been a weakness of hers, and he was suspecting that she was the same thing for him. How did someone even respond to the first utterance of _I love you_ between two people that weren’t even dating?

Just like his offer to take the attack in the stairwell, the words he used ended up coming out without much thought, just the meaning behind them. He used a lot more than three words to get his point across, but he hoped that she’d enjoy what he had to say to her—that he loved her too and that he thought they should go out for a date of some sort sometime when they got the chance. Hitting to send that message was oddly cathartic, but when he saw that it had indeed been sent he felt his heartbeat picking up, panic starting to overtake him. “Gods damn it, did I really just do that?” he asked himself, half-wishing he could go back and delete what he’d just sent. “Well, guess there’s no takin’ that one back. She knows I know what she feels, and now she knows how I feel too, I guess.”

It had been three and a half years since the last time he’d honestly been in love with _someone_ , not just the idea of them. The last time had ended up working out for others much more than it had for him, but this time? Maybe this was going to be his chance to make up for that last time, and all it took was finally telling someone how he felt to get it started.


	9. A Few Months (or Four Years) Later...

The clear sky overhead, slowly darkening as the day turned into an early evening, was causing for long shadows to be cast off of everyone as they gathered in the parking lot at the police station in Ylisstol, ready for a night of revelry and enjoyment at the yearly Christmas party. “At least the weather’s good for tonight,” Chrom remarked as he held the door open for everyone coming in after him, seeing the happy faces of many of his officers and a few of their significant others pushing past him. “Three years in a row of perfect nights for the party, wonder how long that pattern will last.”

“We should enjoy it while we can, that’s for sure,” Frederick said, being the tail-end of the group coming inside. He took to holding the door for Chrom, so that his commander could get inside before him, but Chrom shook his head at the gesture, waiting for Frederick to go in first after all. “I understand tonight’s a special night, but I’m not making you hold the door for me, sir.”

“There’s never a reason for you to call me sir, especially at a friendly gathering like this.” Chrom laughed, standing strong at the door until Frederick passed by him, allowing for him to close up and follow him in. “At any rate, where’s Maribelle tonight? Did she decide she was too good for the station’s party after the past few years?”

Frederick’s eyes shifted to the floor, as he scuffed the toe of his shoe against the tiled ground. “She, er, she chose to spend the evening with your wife, if I’m not mistaken,” he replied, looking back up to Chrom’s slightly surprised and quite amused expression. “D-don’t think that anything’s wrong, she just wanted to spend the evening assisting with watching the children, since there’s so many of them, and poor Olivia shouldn’t be burdened with watching them all simply because she didn’t want to attend.”

“That’s mighty kind of her, I’ll have to thank her for it the next time I see her.” Chrom’s face lit up in a smile, one that Frederick hesitantly tried to replicate. “Oh, what’s wrong? Why are you acting so strange about this? She’s there, isn’t she? You must have been the one to drop her off there for the night, you know exactly where she is…right?”

The toe-scuffing intensified for a moment as Frederick’s forced smile broke and he turned to face away from Chrom. “It’s nothing to do with a fear of not knowing where she is, Chrom. It’s more about how we’d planned for tonight to be a night for ourselves with our friends and we’re spending it apart. I’m beginning to fear that she’s attempting to get the kids to prefer her over me, so that she has the upper hand if she tries to leave.”

“You’re being worried over nothing,” Chrom assured him, reaching out to put a comforting hand on his friend’s shoulder. “The work you and her have put in to make sure your relationship is stronger than ever, after what all happened this summer, wouldn’t have worked the way it had if she wasn’t committed to being with you.”

“That’s true, although I would have loved to have her here with me to show everyone that, despite all the shortcomings and issues we have, we’re still happily together.” Looking back towards Chrom and putting a genuine smile on his face, Frederick gave a small nod when he saw Chrom’s still-smiling face. “But I’m sure she’s being more of a help there with all those children than she would be here. I can’t be greedy about that.”

Somewhere nearby, someone sighed at the word “children”, which caught Chrom’s attention and he quickly looked to see who the culprit was. Finding no one, he turned back to Frederick and, pulling his hand away and holding one finger out to signal he’d be right back, he said, “Before I go, please keep in mind that Olivia was supposed to be in charge of six children and a baby tonight, Maribelle being there to help is nothing short of a godsend.”

Frederick nodded, knowing Chrom’s words to be true, but he couldn’t help but feel like he was being blown off, even if it was momentarily, by the way Chrom was trying to find someone else who seemed to want attention. “I suppose I’ll go find someone else to speak with in the meantime,” he mumbled, heading for where most of the officers there for the night were gathered.

Searching high and low for whoever had been sighing within earshot, Chrom found a familiar face hiding on the other side of one of the office walls, her eyes wide as she saw that she’d been caught. Chrom looked her over, head to toe, and ignoring the fact that she seemed to be alarmed that someone had taken the time to look for her, he had one comment to make: “I get that it’s Christmas Eve, but it’s plenty warm enough outside right now. Why are you wearing such a thick jacket tonight, Panne?”

“I am quite surprised you know my name,” she said, her face going completely blank as she winced back and pulled her jacket tighter to her. “I was under the impression that you were too prominent a figure in this station to care about those of us working here temporarily.”

“I’ve known everyone’s names since you joined us, that doesn’t answer my question but I don’t think I want an answer to it after all.” Laughing, Chrom saw how the woman relaxed a bit before him, her grip loosening once more. “Aren’t you supposed to be home for the holidays, anyway? What are you still doing here?”

She tried peering over his shoulder to look for a way out of the conversation, but when he caught her doing just that she gave up, choosing to reply to him rather than skirt around everything once more. “I elected to work earlier today to give someone else a bit of time with their family,” she explained, before narrowing her eyes and continuing, “but then my husband seemed to have forgotten that he was supposed to come get me by now, which has left me here for some amount of this party.”

“Your…what?” Chrom couldn’t be bothered to mask his surprise as he glanced towards Panne’s hands, initially seeing them to be free of any kind of defining jewelry. “I wasn’t aware you were married, did you being here with us come as any sort of issue to him?”

“I suppose not, where we live is a rather quiet place,” she said with a shrug, noticing how Chrom was straining to look at her hands further to investigate. That led her to tell him, “I don’t bother with wearing my ring, don’t try looking for it. It’s not much of a flashy piece, at any rate, and was given to me solely for its function.”

He jerked his head back up to attention, giving a quick nod at her bluntness on the topic. “I understand, Panne. I’m sure if my wife were as hard of a worker as you are, she’d have wanted the same thing. Still though, how is this the first I’ve heard of you being married?”

“Figures that that’s the part of all this you manage to get hung up on.” She broke her neutral expression to give a tiny smile, pulling her jacket off of her a bit, some of the buttons on it clanging together just loudly enough to draw Chrom’s attention to the source of the noise. “Why, it’s honestly been amazing coming in here these past few weeks and having no one ask about the sudden change in wardrobe, just for you to do that on my last day with your group of officers.”

He was grasping at straws trying to come up with the words needed to explain to her what had gone through his mind when he’d seen her standing there on the other side of the wall, excluding herself from the party while she waited to get to go home. He’d figured she was just being withdrawn and sullen like she always seemed to be when he was at the station with her; he hadn’t known that, by going to talk to her in her last hours with them, he was going to get pulled into finding out quite a few things about her. “You, ahem, you’re not leaving just because you want to return to work at your own station, are you?” he finally managed to ask, prying his eyes to her face while he waited for an answer. “There’s something else going on here, isn’t there?”

“You’re just as unobservant as the rest of them, it seems,” she said after a few moments, time during which she leaned her head back and was looking at the ceiling, drawing her jacket closed once more to shield herself from Chrom’s eyes. “There are quite a few things happening here, my return home being fueled by a desire to work where I belong not being one of them. Spending more time with my husband than just the occasional long weekend I get here, that makes me want to go home. Being able to help with raising our children, that makes me—“

“You have _kids_? As in, not just one, but plural?” Chrom hadn’t meant to blurt that out as an interruption, but the revelation was shocking enough that he couldn’t hold his tongue. She looked back at him and nodded, shifting how she was standing and adjusting her jacket again, leaving him speechless.

“—yes, I have children, how were you not aware of this already? I made sure to put it on my paperwork when I transferred here, so that you knew that if anything happened to them I would rush home to fix things.” Panne was smiling once more, even though her expression wasn’t showing happiness or even friendliness. “My oldest is about a year younger than your oldest, I’m sure they would get along if given the chance. He’s a sweet boy, timid and scared of the animals raised on the farm, but he tries his best.”

Clearing his throat to try and cover up what he’d interjected with before, Chrom glanced back down to where her hands were fidgeting with holding her jacket closed again. “I never would have guessed you’d have kids, I must have missed that part on the papers. I wouldn’t take you for the housewife kind of woman.”

“I am not a housewife,” she spat, becoming offended at what he’d said. “While I am sure it is quite hard for you to wrap your mind around it, given that your wife gave up her own passions to raise your children, a woman can bear children and still work. I have never once sat on the sidelines for a day longer than necessary due to my children, nor will I ever choose to do so.”

“Hearing those words come from you doesn’t surprise me even slightly,” Chrom said with a shrug, seeing that Panne was rather heated about the topic at hand. “I’m sure your children appreciate having a hardworking woman as a mother, and they’ll be overjoyed to have you back with them on a regular basis. Now if you’ll excuse me…” He stepped back to peer around the wall, not finding Frederick where he’d left him. “…I should really get back to mingling with some of the other officers. You’ve been lovely to have with us here these past months, and if anything ever brings you back to Ylisstol, we’d be happy to let you join us once more.”

“The city is too big and busy for my liking, but the offer is appreciated. If I ever need to return, for whatever reason, I will be sure to stop by here first and foremost.” She sighed as he took another step backwards, the forced expression on his face one of feigned excitement. “Listen, I understand that I might not have been the nicest woman around here, but I have tried my hardest to fit in among your officers, despite being separated from my family almost entirely during my stay. You can at least try to look happy about me considering your offer if it’s necessary.”

“No, no, I am happy about that! Overjoyed, even! I just, er, need to make sure everything’s running smoothly and no one’s locked themselves in an office for whatever reason.” He was now side-stepping to get around the wall, leaving Panne’s line of sight slowly but completely after a few large steps.

She let go of her jacket and leaned against the wall, running a hand down her face as she did. “That was a completely unbearable conversation,” she groaned, her hand crossing her mouth as she spoke. “I’m most certainly not happy that he’d offer me a space here once more if I needed it. Leaving three kids at home with their father to work here in Ylisstol was hard enough, but to do that with four…” As her voice trailed off, she was shaking her head ever-so-slightly, her other hand finding its way under her jacket to rest on her side. “It’s not going to happen, not on my watch.”

Down the hall towards the small offices that the other officers used, Cordelia was banging her fist on the door to her own little room, the handle locked in place and not budging when she’d tried opening it. “I know you’re in there, rooting around looking for what I brought for today’s festivities,” she loudly said, hoping the person that had barricaded themselves in her office would hear her and unlock the door. “Joke’s on you, Gaius, because I didn’t bring anything special for anyone this time. Not even a crumb.”

Exactly as she’d expected, the door was unlocked and opened, the culprit standing on the other side looking at her sheepishly through the little crack he’d made for himself. “How was I supposed to know you’d stop doing that effective immediately?” he asked her, keeping her door barely open. “Would’ve figured that was a threat that would start with the next time one of these events happened, not today.”

“What money was I supposed to use to make anything for you to fight with Stahl over?” she countered, shutting him down and making him close the door on her once more. “Hey, stop doing this! Get out of my office, you dirty criminal!”

“Dirty criminal? Someone snuck in?” Walking past Cordelia as she banged her head on the door in frustration, Stahl hadn’t heard her mention his name moments before but was aware enough of the situation to know that she was referring to none other than Gaius. “I thought Chrom said he wasn’t allowed to be here tonight unless he had a date.”

Banging her head on the door again, hearing Gaius’ cackling laughter on the other side, Cordelia grumbled, “That’s the rule every year, and yet he still gets to come because I take pity on him and give him a chance. That ends tonight, though! I’m done letting him walk all over me just because I want a companion and he’s a decent enough man when he’s not acting so childish. I’m not letting him use me for things like this again!”

“Oh, well, that’s good for you, I think.” Stahl popped a cracker he’d grabbed from the break room into his mouth, quietly crunching down on it while he watched Cordelia work through her emotions, and when she seemed to be done he shrugged it off and continued heading in the direction he’d been going in. “You have fun getting him out of there, I’m getting back to work for a bit. It should be a quiet night, so maybe I’ll see you out with everyone else at some point?”

“Maybe you will,” she replied, kicking the door, “or maybe you won’t, it all depends on how this turns out.” She waited until she heard his footsteps disappear down the hall before she let out a scream, banging on the door several times with her fist. “Get out of there for real this time, Gaius! I am done with you!”

“You’re only saying that because of who you were talking to,” Gaius told her as he reopened the door to the same crack it had been at before. “If it had been anyone else, except maybe Chrom, you’d be begging me to let you in because you wanted to flirt with me or something. But no, it had to be him walking by to remind you that you’re just as into him as you are into me, so you’re going to play hard to get or whatever to make me change my mind on locking myself in here. You know what I say to that?”

“Nothing, because I’m being serious when I say you need to leave?”

“I say if you want me out, you’re going to have to get a bit physical.” Waggling his eyebrows to look seductive, Gaius watched as Cordelia rolled her eyes and turned to walk away. “Wait, where are you going? Aren’t we doing this whole ‘tension’ interplay like we always do? You’re normally all over being the seductress to my rugged criminal, what gives this time?”

Not even bothering to turn back towards him, she flipped her hair off her shoulder and said, “What gives is that I’m done being your means for being accepted by everyone else. You can leave for the night, Chrom won’t want you here when he realizes you’re without a date.”

“Without a date? C’mon Cordelia, you promised you’d be my date tonight.” Opening the door completely and running out after her, Gaius got close enough to her that, had he wanted to, he could have reached out and grabbed her hand, but as he watched her briskly pick up her pace to get away from him, he stopped his chase entirely. “You’re being serious about all this, aren’t you? What does this mean about the treats you’ve been bringing me? Does that stop?”

“Go home, Gaius, I’m not talking to you right now.” She pursed her lips together and continued walking, not giving him so much as a second look (although the realization that she’d left him with full access to her office again dawned on her once she was almost at her destination). Where she ended up was in the hallway with the bigger offices, one of the doors propped open and the sounds of frantic typing happening inside of it; she poked her head in the doorway and saw Stahl sitting at his desk, one hand holding his crackers and the other typing something out on his keyboard. “I wanted to come thank you for helping me out a moment ago,” she said, not even sure if he was listening to her. “You helped me come to an important conclusion back there.”

Swallowing the cracker he was actively chewing, Stahl looked from his computer to see Cordelia standing in the doorway and blinked at her, trying to process what she’d just said. “All I did was remind you that your friend and criminal investigator in there wasn’t supposed to be here tonight, I don’t get what that deserves thanks for.” While he watched her, she came in to standing on his side of the doorway, smiling at him as she made herself comfortable against the doorframe. “O-kay then, you’re just going to watch me work and not explain any of this to me, aren’t you?”

“I’m not sure what needs explaining here, Stahl. You reminded me that Gaius is nothing but unwanted trouble, something that I must have been overlooking whenever I’d see him for his appearance.” Her smile grew bigger for a moment, until she realized Stahl wasn’t really paying attention to her, having gone right back to typing the report he was working on. “Can’t you put working aside for five minutes while I talk to you?”

He shook his head, fingers on one hand flying across the keyboard. “I really can’t, not if I want to get to be out with everyone for at least a little bit tonight. I’m not going to waste the city’s money on paying me if I’m not getting my fair share of work done for it.”

“That’s a lovely way to think, and normally I would be all for it, but right now, isn’t there something better you could be doing besides working?” Batting her eyelashes, Cordelia knew that she was fighting a losing battle if Stahl didn’t look up from his screen to see what she was doing, and when he didn’t budge from his seat for a solid half-minute she sighed, stopping the flirtatious act she was putting on. “I get it, work’s most important right now. I’ll leave you be, but don’t forget that you said that you’d see me around later.”

He didn’t immediately respond to her, causing her to sigh a bit louder and turn to head out of the office and join everyone in the main room. When he knew that his office was empty aside from himself once more, he let out the breath he’d been holding in to keep him from saying anything at all to Cordelia, leaning back in his chair and letting his head roll around as he stopped being so tense about her presence. “I should’ve taken her up on the offer of talking,” he chided himself. “It’s not every day that a pretty lady comes into your office wanting to talk to you, what if that’s the last time that happens to me? Gods, I know she’s got mixed feelings and all that, but what if her being here was my last chance at ever getting a girlfriend? What if—no, Stahl! You can’t be distracted like this!”  
Sitting back up in his chair properly, he looked at the report he’d been typing up, narrowing his eyes to read some of the tinier print that had already been provided for him. “I’ve just got to finish this and then I can go out for a little bit. If there’s any calls while I’m out there, I’ll run back here and take them. That’s an easy way to handle things.” He rotated his wrist until it popped, then it was right back to frantically typing up everything that needed to be on the report page. “I really wish Miriel had done this for me before she was done today, but she’s always working so hard on the bookwork that it’s good for someone else to do it for a change. Would be better if that someone else wasn’t me, but…”

With no other distractions of a similar nature to Cordelia coming in, he was able to knock out typing and transmitting the report to the proper people relatively quickly, allowing for him to step out of the office and follow the sounds of friendly conversation to where everyone was still gathered. His first instinct when he got out there was to look for anyone who might want to talk to him, but his eyes landed on a head of orange hair visible over the back of a chair. “I thought the entire reason Cordelia interrupted me was because she was kicking him out,” he said, shaking his head at the flip-flop decision that must have been made on that one. “Oh well, it’s probably for the best that she flirts with him, I’m not good enough for anyone.”

“Excuse me, but you are Stahl, correct?” a stern voice asked from behind him, causing him to turn around to see who the speaker was. The harsh and cold eyes that met his immediately lightened up when he eagerly nodded. “Thank the gods, here I was expecting to have to run around all night looking for you to express my gratitude for what you did for my family.”

“Your family?” Stahl wasn’t sure who this guy was, but if he’d done something that important he was sure he’d find out soon enough. “I haven’t done any family-related calls lately, so are you sure it’s me your looking for?”

“Positive.” The man nodded his head as a reinforcement for his statement, his dark hair bouncing very slightly as he did. “My name is Lon’qu, and while this is the first time we have actually properly met, you played a large part in getting my wife here into town this summer when she was stuck up at the snowy horse camp.”

Stahl’s jaw dropped slightly as he looked Lon’qu over, never having had a face to match the description of the man to before then. “You’re married to Chrom’s sister! That explains a whole lot! You’re very welcome for what I did for her, and for you, I guess! Sorry I couldn’t stick around to meet you that day, I had to get back home to get some sleep before coming in here for a shift and—oh, I should ask, since you’re thanking me, it must’ve all gone well, right? I never heard anything otherwise, so…”

“It did go over very well, all thanks to you being so willing to brave snowy roads to get her and bring her to safety.” Bowing out of respect, Lon’qu waited a few seconds before he stood back up, Stahl staring at him with his mouth slightly opened still. “What, were you not expecting any kind of thanks for what you did? It would have been disastrous if you hadn’t stepped in to help.”

“Well, it’s just that I was called to help, it wasn’t me doing it out of the kindness of my heart or anything, it was just doing my job.” Closing his mouth and putting on a large, cheesy grin, Stahl saw that Lon’qu didn’t seem to care about those details. He only cared that he’d done something great, not about why it had been done in the first place.

“You want to see pictures of him, don’t you?” It was an offer that Lon’qu only made to fill the silence that had fallen between them, and when Stahl said that he would want to (if it was no problem, anyway), he turned to point in the direction of the largest group in the station. “Come with me, then. Lissa would have ones much handier than I would.”

“Sure thing! Just keep in mind that I can’t be out here too long, someone’s got to be manning the phones tonight even though there’s a party going on, and it’s me like always.” Laughing at his own comment, Stahl didn’t notice that Lon’qu was already walking away until he’d collected himself and found that he was alone. “Hey, wait up! Don’t leave me behind like this, it’s only going to give me less time for chatting!”

“Ah, sounds like Stahl’s out of his office for the moment,” Chrom said, turning an ear to the voice he heard calling out as he stood in that large group. “Good for him, it’s never fun to ask him to work this shift every year but he does it so well. He’s reliable, no matter what the situation, and he’s a great asset to the staff here.”

“Weren’t you paying attention when Lon’qu said he was going to go find him and thank him for the whole ‘going to Ferox’ thing?” Lissa asked, her eyes focused at her brother’s feet as she spoke to him. “Like, I am pretty sure he said that and everyone else knew that’s where he was going.”

With a laugh, Chrom replied, “Yes, Lissa, I did hear that. I wasn’t aware that he wasn’t having to go all the way back to Stahl’s office to do it. At any rate, why didn’t you go with him to thank him as well?”

“Because I am pretty sure I thanked him a million times over on the ride here, that’s why. I mean, I’m not positive I did, but I bet if I found someone else who was there they’d back me up on this one.” She puffed her cheeks out much like an indignant child would, looking up at Chrom and making him laugh once more because of it.

“Watching the two of you interact is always a treasure,” Frederick commented, his focus shifting between the brother and sister as one continued acting immature and the other kept laughing at it. “It’s a shame that moments like this happen so infrequently now, with you living in Ferox and whatnot, Lissa.”

“I-I know, I really miss getting to do this on a regular basis.” Lissa let her face relax for a moment, while she went back to looking down at everyone’s feet. “Living up there’s nice, and it’s great for Lon’qu because that’s his home, but I just…I miss…” She shook her head. “I’m going to go walk around for a bit, we can talk more once I know what I want to say.”

She was stepping away from the group when Lon’qu rejoined it, him grabbing her in a hug as they passed by one another. “Where are you going?” he asked her, getting the response of her wanting to just walk to clear her mind. “Fair enough. Stay close by, don’t do anything you will regret. I’ll be here with Chrom and his friends when you’re ready to come back.” Her eyes shined as she nodded, accepting his offer, and when they broke apart she was off on her own, her glances in every direction telling that she wasn’t merely walking around for her own sake.

“What, uh, happened to having her show me pictures of the baby?” Stahl questioned, coming up right behind Lon’qu and sending a shudder down his spine. “Where’s she going? Should I follow her now to get them?”

“Er, I don’t think following her would be best right now.” Lon’qu looked towards everyone standing in the group he’d left, them all looking back at him as they’d been focusing on Lissa before she’d walked off. “Does anyone here have any pictures of O’wain that we can show this man?”

“Lon’qu, you have a bunch of them in your wallet.” Chrom’s response was short, sweet, and made Lon’qu give a long sigh as he realized how correct the statement was. While he fished out his wallet from his pocket to show actual printed pictures of the kid to Stahl, grumbling the entire time about how he hadn’t wanted to do that, Chrom was shaking his head and looking at everyone else who was part of the group. “And this is why I get along with that man as well as I do, we both get so focused on the specific thing we want done that we forget we’re capable of doing it ourselves until we’ve made a huge mess.”

“I wouldn’t say that him forgetting he has hard copies of pictures is him making a mess,” Frederick offered, crossing his arms over his chest. “Why, if I were the type of man to have that sort of devotion to my children, I would—“

“You have no room to speak on this matter.” Also with arms crossed in front of her, looking sternly at Frederick as he stopped speaking after being cut off, Miriel shook her head at what she had heard. “Everyone present at this very moment is all-too-aware of how much you love your children and what they mean for you. You might not carry pictures of them in your wallet, but you certainly have framed ones of them in your office.”

“And you always try to show them to us when we backtalk you,” Ricken added with pride, before backing out of the conversation a bit as he realized he could get reprimanded for what he had said. “B-but why would any of us ever do that, when you’re second in command around here?”

“Your input was helpful but ultimately unnecessary, Ricken, so thank you for trying.” Her head turned and tilted down so she could look the smaller man in the eyes, Miriel sighed as she saw him completely deflate, going from exuding that pride to trying to find somewhere else to go to escape the situation. “Why don’t you go find Nowi or someone you typically interact with and leave the conversation like this to those of us who can handle it more maturely than you can?”

“I can…I guess. I just wanted to, I don’t know, be part of the big group that you guys had going on.” Letting his shoulders drop in his sadness, Ricken excused himself from the group and headed over to where the aforementioned Nowi was sitting, so that he could talk to possibly the one person present who would have the same level of involvement with the others as he did.

“That was rather rude, wouldn’t you think?” Chrom asked, looking to Miriel as she pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and shrugged. “That poor guy’s only ever looking for some validation and some good, fun conversation, there was no need to push him over to someone a lot…younger than everyone else, including him.”

Her hand moving from her glasses to covering her mouth to stifle a laugh, Miriel’s eyes were focused on watching how Ricken awkwardly began talking to Nowi, him saying something that had her jumping to her feet and grabbing his hand to drag him somewhere against his will. “She’s far from younger than him, or anyone here, really. Looks can be quite deceiving, I’m afraid, and hers definitely are.”

“There’s no way that she’s…” Shaking his head as he watched the same interaction Miriel was, Chrom had to take a moment to collect his thoughts and process what he’d just heard, deciding in the end that arguing the point wasn’t worth it. “Whatever, what’s done is done and you shoehorned Ricken into playing games with Nowi all night.”

“He enjoys it as much as she does, and he wouldn’t have gone had he not wanted to, as I don’t hold any authority over him in a situation like this,” Miriel reminded Chrom, “but you continue telling yourself that my decision here was the wrong one. He will find it much more fun to be spending time with her, at any rate.”

“Gods, that’s a handsome boy!” Stahl blurted out, having finally been shown a small picture of the child. “I can definitely see why you’d be excited to carry a picture of him around in your pocket, he looks like a real charmer!”

“Er, I suppose that’s one way to look at why he’s in there,” Lon’qu said, quickly putting the picture back where it came from and sliding his wallet back into his pocket. “But thank you for thinking he’s handsome, Lissa and I are quite proud of him.”

“Makes it all the more interesting that you’re both here tonight on Chrom’s invite,” Robin said, popping into the conversation in the same spot Ricken had just left. “When Sumia and I dropped the girls off, we went in and saw your little one already there without either one of you present and were quite surprised about it. Who would have figured you both would be okay with leaving him in the hands of someone else for the night?”

Lon’qu scratched at his arm as he contemplated how he should answer the question, before deciding that being straightforward was best. “We were eager to get a night without him, as bad as it sounds. There is no one in Ferox I would trust to watch him, but here there’s Olivia and I would put my life in her hands if necessary.” That was when he gave a respectful nod towards Chrom, the blue-haired man watching him intently as he did. “I believe that, of everyone in this room, Chrom knows best of her care and affection.”

“That I do, and she and I are both always willing to watch O’wain if you decide you want to leave him with us at any time.” Winking, Chrom was able to get Lon’qu to smile at him for a split second before he started coughing to try and cover the friendly gesture, brushing it off like it had never happened. “At any rate, I’m sure Olivia’s having the time of her life watching a baby again. Lucina and Inigo too, they’re both smitten with their cousin even though they’ve only met him a handful of times now.”

“Them being near him tonight is not an issue, I firmly believe that they’re just as mild-mannered as their mother when it comes to being around someone so young. Others that are present, however, I am not so confident in.” Looking first to Robin and then to Frederick, Lon’qu allowed himself to show that he was not exactly pleased with either of them and their kids’ presence at the house that night. “How am I to know that your children won’t break my son tonight?”

Robin opened his mouth to speak, then promptly realized that whatever he said was going to be nothing more than a lie, given his girls’ tendency to start bickering and get anyone around them involved as pawns in their wars. Frederick, however, was not afraid to say what he felt was the best answer he could give. “Neither of my children have picked up their mother’s talent for picking fights whenever they don’t get their way, thank the gods, but I can understand why you would be apprehensive on wanting them near your child.”

“You know what, when it comes to your family, perhaps being worried about what either of those boys could do is the lesser evil.” Lon’qu drew in a deep breath, steadying himself and keeping his emotions leveled as he approached what he had to say. “Maribelle, on the other hand, is a menace to the well-being of my O’wain, no matter how much you want to try telling me she’s changed and grown since her bad idea that almost jeopardized his safe arrival into the world.”

“She has changed, even if you refuse to listen to me saying so. Going through the rigorous counseling course we signed up for to work out the issues that had built up in our relationship changed her for the better, even if…” Frederick’s voice dropped as he shook his head at his own thoughts. “Even if she might be taking what she’s learned the entire wrong way and plotting to leave.”

“Leave? Her? She’d never!” Laughing at the absurdity of what he’d just heard, Robin watched as Frederick seemed to withdraw from the scenario he’d just brought up, continuing shaking his head as he mumbled other things that led to his worry. “I understand that she’s done some things that she regrets, but above all we all know she’s dedicated to being a mother to her sons and a good wife for her husband. Everyone knows that, don’t we?” He was looking for validation from everyone else in the group, but all he was getting was silence and blank stares. “Er, some reinforcement here would be great.”

“It’s quite hard to reinforce a statement when your only experiences with the woman have been ones in this exact setting,” Miriel whispered to him as he she leaned closer to him, Robin sighing when he realized she was right. She then said something loud enough for everyone else to hear, directly contradicting what her whispering had been about. “I can say that, from witnessing how you and her are attached at the hip whenever you are at a station event that she is dedicated to you, and based on how her every other word is about the well-being of her children I can assume she’s dedicated to them as well.”

“There’s no need to _assume_ it, Frederick knows it to be true.” Stepping towards his friend to give him a hug, Chrom made sure to pat his back a few times in comfort before he broke away and retook his exact spot from before. “Why, I’m sure if I called Olivia right now, she’d tell me about how Maribelle hasn’t shut up about the boys the entire time she’s been there.”

Lon’qu took another deep breath, still trying to calm himself to keep composure despite the current topic being one he wasn’t a fan of. “Or she’ll talk about how she’s being responsible with watching my son and ignoring everything that woman says to her,” he said as he exhaled that held breath, trying to muffle his own words so he wouldn’t have to face consequences from having said them.

“Why can’t she watch the child and listen to Maribelle at the same time?” Chrom offered, trying to keep things from escalating into an argument. “I’m sure it’s possible, and besides, I bet they both need to have their eyes on O’wain to keep the other kids from messing with him too much.”

“They wouldn’t mess with him.” The statement was harsh, Lon’qu glaring at everyone in the group who had children there that could potentially do the unwanted action, and when he got three looks in return that told him these fathers had no idea if they could promise that, he turned towards the door. “I’ll be calling Olivia for myself to make sure she keeps everyone else far, far away from O’wain tonight. I will be back shortly.”

As he walked off, Chrom sighed, watching him head for the door and throwing it open once he was there. “I’ll go make sure he’s not too upset,” he told everyone else, setting off in the same direction. “Something tells me he’s not going to take Olivia being unable to make that promise very well.”

“I’ll follow you out as well, I feel like I should personally apologize if it’s either of my sons who cause trouble tonight. I cannot speak for Maribelle, quite obviously, but speaking for Brady and Freddy is something I can do.” Before he followed Chrom’s path, Frederick made a motion for Robin to come with him, something the man seemed surprised by. “You have two daughters there that could cause more trouble than my sons could ever dream of. You should be there as well.”

“I guess so,” Robin replied, “even though I’m not sure they’ll hurt a hair on that boy’s head, given that they enjoy being around younger kids.”

The two of them leaving meant that the group had basically disbanded, Miriel sighing and finding someone else to talk to and Stahl deciding that it was best if he headed back to his office. The lack of the large group having conversation in the middle of the room meant that the smaller pairs on the sides of the room could get a bit louder, talking about whatever they wanted without the desire to spy on what Chrom and his friends were discussing. By the treat table, Sumia was happily showing off her pies to Cordelia, who wasn’t paying much attention as she was watching the hallway that led to the offices. Ricken and Nowi were still in the middle of having some game-related conversation, a piece of paper and several pens on the table in front of them, and they had been joined by Gregor, his booming laugh whenever the two smaller people said something enough to get people to look to see what was funny.

Still slumped in a chair away from the action, Gaius threw his head back and gave a loud groan. “You know what I want to do right now?” he asked the person in the chair next to him, who was sitting so that his legs were thrown over one of the armrests, his eyes closed as if he were trying to take a nap. “I want to go out and have a smoke. Pass the old vape pen around a few times, see if anyone’s got any advice on flavors for me to mix in it. You down for coming with me, pal?”

“I’m barely down for bein’ here right now, Gaius, given what’s the plan for tonight and all that. Why the hell would the Vaike go outside with ya when he doesn’t ever do that kind of stuff to begin with?” Kicking his feet over the armrest so that he was sitting properly in the chair once more, Vaike shook his head as he looked at Gaius, the orange-haired man scooting himself back up in his own seat. “You shouldn’t even be here anyway, maybe steppin’ out for a smoke isn’t the brightest idea.”

“Hey now, I’m allowed here because when I came in, I had a date. Not my fault she’s bailed on me or whatever, kind of like yours has.” He grinned as he watched Vaike tense up, eyes narrowing at him for what he’d said. “Really, though, have you seen her around once since we got here? What’s she even doing?”

“Knowin’ her, probably sittin’ in her office lookin’ at ways t’get out of this place.” The narrowed glare didn’t loosen up, not even after Gaius got to his feet and said he was going to go outside anyway, potential punishments for being where he shouldn’t be damned. “Have fun with that, tell everyone else who’s out there hey from me, will ya?”

“Sure thing. Good luck on finding something to do in here to pass the time while I’m gone, unless it’s napping, then…yeah, no, still good luck on that.” With a wave, Gaius headed for the same door Chrom and company had gone out before, even though he was unaware that was where they had gone.

With almost everyone having stepped outside for whatever reason they might have, Vaike pulled himself up out of his chair and found himself looking around the mostly empty station, trying to decide if any of the few remaining people were worth talking to. It didn’t help that they all seemed to be wrapped up in conversations of their own, and as he didn’t want to be an intruder on what they were talking about he was left wandering around with no real direction to be pointed in. All he wanted was to talk to someone out of the ordinary—he knew he could have followed everyone out to keep conversation with one of them, but he hadn’t wanted to do that to try and speak with someone different.

He found her standing with her back to him, looking at a wall of different accolades that the station had received over the years. “Hey, uh, funny seein’ you here,” he said to her as he walked up beside her, his eyes focused more on the same awards that hers were than anything else. “Mind if I, er, stand here and look while you do? I know it’s probably a mighty weird question, and you’re allowed t’tell me no, but…”

“I don’t mind if you’re here,” Lissa answered him, her gaze falling from the awards on the wall towards her feet, which were beginning to point inwards. “I’m kind of the ‘odd one’ at the event, anyway, not living around here anymore and all that. Me being okay with something shouldn’t matter as much as you being okay with it.”

“You know I ain’t askin’ ‘cause of me thinkin’ you don’t belong.” His words were catching in the back of his throat as he tried saying them, causing them to come out a lot more jumbled than he’d hoped they would. It was enough to get her to look up at him while he turned to face her, their eyes locking somewhere in the middle and making him stiffen up at the contact. “I just didn’t wanna make y’feel awkward or somethin’ by me choosin’ to come talk t’ya, that’s all.”

She smiled at him for what he’d said. “Thanks for caring enough to do that, I suppose. I’ve been…not _meaning_ to find you tonight, but I have wanted to talk to you if I got the chance. The last time we spoke wasn’t on the best of terms and I don’t want that to be the last thing you remember of me.”

“Trust me, that’s far from the last thing I’d remember.” He was trying to look away, but something about Lissa’s eyes was just pulling him in, holding him in a place he didn’t want to be trapped in. “It’s almost like nothin’ changed about you, Lissa. Four years since everythin’ went down and you’re just as beautiful now as you were then.”

“Ha, now you’re really just trying to flatter me or something,” she laughed, bringing one arm up in front of her, her hand latching around her other arm. “Let’s just leave it at things not really having changed in four years, even though we both know they have.” Her laughter faded as she pursed her lips together, her eyes holding her gaze steady even as she shifted her head down a bit. “They’ve changed a whole lot, really. For both of us.”

“Yeah, you’d be a mad man t’think they haven’t.” Finally pulling his eyes away from hers, Vaike looked to the awards on the wall with a sigh. “So, uh, how’s life up there in Ferox with that little family of yours? Bet it’s much nicer than anythin’ you could’ve found around here, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t say it’s better than anything here, but it’s what I always wanted, I guess.” Lissa’s head was still turned down, and now without anything for her to be looking at above the floor she was basically staring at her feet. “But I’m really wanting to come back to Ylisstol to stay, so that…” Her words became a whisper that only she could hear, leading for Vaike to ask her to repeat herself. “So that my son can grow up around other kids, rather than by himself like he would up there.”

“Ah, yeah, makes sense. Don’t wanna have him miss out on playin’ with anyone.” Vaike thought about all the kids that she was referring to there, nodding sagely as if he actually cared about that decision. “Say, what’s his name again? I remember bein’ told it but the specifics kinda have faded from memory.” He honestly hadn’t committed it to memory at all, the name itself being a reminder of some of the violence he’d tried to act on, but now that there was some kind of pleasant conversation happening he figured it was a good time to get a refresher on it.

“I wasn’t aware anyone had ever told you it,” she replied with a laugh, standing back up straight and staring at him rather than her feet. “His name’s O’wain.”

“That’s right, sounds like some uppity name that’s befittin’ any kid of yours.” He could feel her gaze on him so he looked back to her, a grin on his face showing that his statement was nothing more than a joke. “Bet he’s a whole bunch just like his dad, which has got t’be really good for you t’have t’deal with on a daily basis. That man y’picked, he’s not all that bad of a guy once you get past everything that happened.”

Lissa took in a deep breath, closing her eyes before nodding with a small laugh. “You’re right on that. Once you move past what happened to put me and him together, you can look at us and think, hey, we’re basically made for each other.” She wasn’t speaking like she was gloating about finding her true love; in fact, her voice had a solemn tone to it that made it sound almost like she was saddened by something. “I wish I had actually told you, with my voice and not my actions, that I had found someone perfect for me that wasn’t you.”

“Uh, hey, can we move on from dwellin’ on that? Not sayin’ that the Vaike wouldn’t have appreciated that way back when, but times have changed, no need for dwellin’ anymore. We’ve both moved on and grown as people, haven’t we?” His grin had faded but he was still smiling at her, hoping that she’d get the hint and drop the subject.

“I didn’t mean to make it seem like I was dwelling, so sure.” Her response was brief, but it was paired with her opening the purse on her shoulder and digging through it, all while he stood there watching her with wary eyes that were only getting warier. What was she planning on doing, pulling out pictures of her kid to show him? Reveal that she had some recording device going to keep tabs on their conversation? “It’s funny, though. Remember how I said I’d hoped I’d get to talk to you tonight?”

He nodded, despite her not looking to see, so he gave a low grunt to show that he’d heard her and was responding appropriately. “Well, there’s a reason for that, and it wasn’t to talk about what we once had or what I have now.” She pulled a box from her purse, turning to him with it in her outstretched hand, and he stared at what she was offering him in complete disbelief of what she had. He recognized that box, he had been quite familiar with it once upon a time, but he’d given it away to someone who he no longer needed it. Before he could form any words to ask about where it’d come from, Lissa was quick to answer: “Maribelle gave it to me, and now I think it’s only fair I give it back to you. You know, so you can use it to tell your new lady love how much she means to you?”

“She kept it and gave it t’you to give t’me…” Taking the box in his hands and opening it, Vaike’s eyes instinctively narrowed at the ring inside the box, before he grabbed it out of what held it and examined it closer. “It’s kinda flashy and not—hey wait, who said anythin’ t’you ‘bout me havin’ _any_ kind of love?”

“You know how Maribelle is, she can’t keep her lips shut about anything, even if it’s about you and finding your own true love.” Grinning, Lissa closed her purse back up and looked around the room as it started refilling with people as they came back in from their smoke break. “I’m going to try finding Lon’qu now, you have fun doing what’s right with that ring!” She stepped back a couple paces, before bowing her head quickly, lifting it back up to look at Vaike with shining eyes. “And thanks for being understanding about everything after all. I hope we can try rebuilding some kind of friendship between us someday!”

As she scurried off, he couldn’t find it within himself to try calling anything after her, his focus entirely on the ring he’d been given. He’d passed that thing off to Maribelle four years ago, how had it ended up back in his possession in the end? “Gods damn it, you better not be planning anything with that glitzy piece of garbage.” As an arm wrapped around his shoulders, the faint smell of fruity smoke clinging to the air surrounding the speaker, he was able to pull his eyes away from the ring long enough to see Sully’s disgusted expression as she saw the ring for herself. “What are you even doing with that? Isn’t that, you know, something you got rid of years ago?”

“Trust me, what just happened wouldn’t make any sense t’ya if I spent all night explainin’ it.” With her watching, he made quick work of putting the ring back into its box and tucking the box into one of the pockets of his jacket. While his hand was in there, his fingers brushed against something else and he felt his breath catch in his throat while he tried to push what he was depositing in the pocket lower than the other object. She raised an eyebrow at his struggle, which he tried to play off as best as he could with, “H-hey, why don’t we, uh, go find somewhere that ain’t so crowded so I can try explainin’ it after all?”

“I’m sure I can make a guess as to what happened, judging by who was left in here with you,” she replied, turning from him to see where Lissa had ended up finding Lon’qu, the two of them standing across the room talking with Chrom among others, “but you know what? I’m feeling adventurous. Let’s go for it.”

As she got off of him and started looking for somewhere fitting the description he’d given, he went ahead and grabbed that other object from his pocket—an almost-identical ring box, something that he held onto tightly as he followed her to somewhere more private.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe I just did that


End file.
